


The Teacher

by catsvrsdogscatswin



Series: The "T" Saga [2]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Arya never read that far and I'll be damned if I have to write that clusterfuck, Magic, Phantomhive Twins Reveal(TM) is teased but not explicitly mentioned, Swearing, narratively its great but I don't want to be schooled by retrograde error, the manga's not done yet I ain't risking shit, there's demons and frightened teens of course this story has extreme swearing and violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 66
Words: 346,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22687450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsvrsdogscatswin/pseuds/catsvrsdogscatswin
Summary: After the tearful farewell, England (the idiot) apparently botched his spell, and now our intrepid heroine is in a different world alright, but still not hers! So, with little else left to do, she seeks out Ciel Phantomhive in the hopes that maybe the Lord of Games can figure out how to get her home. Unfortunately, Ciel is not in the habit of giving away free handouts.(No pairings) Theoretically able to be read as a stand-alone.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), No pairings
Series: The "T" Saga [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622710
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	1. That Butler, Plunging In

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of what is promising to be a very long series, so if there's any plot holes, it's probably because I haven't explained it yet or I've explained it before, as well as the fact I am focusing on character and not plot. My plan is to run this particular character through as many fandoms as I can, so forgive me if the method is a bit, well, skewed. If you're here from my Trekker fanfic, then you may ignore the portion below and simply continue reading. For those of you who have not, this is in fact a continuation/sequel to another work of mine in the Hetalia fandom. It can be read alone, but I will reference a lot of things from that fic, so here's a premise of what happened:
> 
> Aryana Thompson is a 17-year-old female from Virginia, USA. Due to a "spell" that a casual internet friend gave her to try, she was sucked out of our world and placed in the Hetalia one. (Cliché I know, but that's only the premise.) As she enters the world and associates with the characters, they are attacked by the "2ps" ("Second Players"), a fanon, darker version of the Hetalia characters. After much fighting, hardship, and near-death experiences, they defeat the 2ps and send them to a world they can't escape from. During her stay in the Hetalia world, Aryana (who prefers Arya) learned fluent German and a somewhat basic grasp of Italian, although she did learn a lot of curse words from her teacher, as well as gun safety (she's not a very good shot), an informal strategy education, and a brief apprenticeship in magical theory. She was sent back to her world by her teacher (England), however he messed up on his spell and sent her to the Black Butler world instead.

_Arya's POV:_

**FWOOM.**

For the third time in my life, everything flipped upside down as I felt myself tumbling helplessly through a continuous, blindingly bright stream of light, my hands wrapping tightly around the straps of my waterproof bag as I felt it being tugged away by centrifugal force, squeezing my eyes shut as the light grew brighter and brighter and the chaotic tumbling sensation grew and grew until–

**SPLASH!**

I shrieked, although it was immediately muffled, as I plunged into water so ice-cold it seemed like fire stabbing into my limbs, thrashing to the surface of the dark, foul-tasting water.

"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?" I screamed into the night sky, seeing snowflakes float down and land in the surface of the –river. I was in a river.

My mind went into overdrive even as my eyes flicked this way and that, taking in the small knots of people dressed in very odd but very familiar clothing walking to and fro, regaining my sense as I swam to shore.

There were no rivers near my house. There were no rivers anywhere near my house.

I felt my body rack itself with shivers as I finally got to shore and stood, wrapping my arms around myself as my teeth chattered and danced. Whatever river I had fallen into, it was so cold there had been literally chunks of ice floating about inside of it.

"E-excuse me, b-but c-could y-you t-tell m-me w-what c-city t-this i-is?" I asked a nearby man who was mucking around with some kind of net, and without looking up, he grunted "London."

Right, so I was in London. Okay, maybe England messed up on the location a little bit. No big deal. I could call my parents and figure something out. It wasn't this cold nor this far along into winter at England's house, so I definitely wasn't in _Hetalia_ anymore, at the very least.

I looked a little closer at the man fiddling with the nets, and noticed with a deep and growing sense of foreboding that he was dressed _way_ out of date, as had been all of the people that I'd seen from the river. "What's with the getup? I mean, what _year_ do you think it _is?"_ I asked him suspiciously, the little voice in the back of my head trying desperately to allay my suspicious. Maybe I'd been dropped into the middle of some LARP thing or a movie set. Maybe today was some sort of holiday in England where everybody dressed like they were from an older time.

The man finally put down his net and gave me a disgruntled look.

"Look bird, what year do you think it is? It's 1888, as everyone knows."

1888.

_1888._

_**1888.** _

"ENGLAND YOU SON OF A BITCH, YOU GOT IT WRONG! AGAIN!"

The man jerked away as I furiously shouted into the night sky, and I turned red with embarrassment, quickly spinning and walking quickly towards the packed-together buildings and streetlamps.

Given by the fact that I was in London, it had probably been the Thames I'd fallen into, and I made a face, quickly trying to find a path to climb back up to street level. My feet crunched on the frost-encrusted pebbles and driftwood, and I wrapped my arms around myself as I shivered harder. My brand-new black trenchcoat that I had gotten just a few weeks ago was soaked in filthy water –apparently all of the history books that said the Thames was horribly polluted at this point in history were right– and I desperately hoped it wasn't ruined. It'd been a birthday present from a very good friend.

_Right, there's a ladder._

I grabbed the first rung and heaved myself up, the icy metal biting into my bare, soaked hands as I shivered harder. Before I did anything else in this utter and complete catastrophe, I needed to change clothes to prevent my death via hypothermia, not to mention the fact that beneath the trenchcoat, I was wearing riveted jeans and a long-sleeve shirt with random swirly red designs –not exactly the most subtle or the most time-fitting outfit for 1888.

I made a face as I swung myself over the edge, shaking my head rapidly to fling the ice-cold water droplets away from my shoulder-length blonde hair. Luckily, it seemed that this was a fairly unpopulated bit of town, and I knocked carefully on a door of a broken-down shed, waiting for several seconds.

 _No answer._

I ducked inside and set my bag on the ground, opening it up and peering inside. Complete and utter blackness: it looked like the infinite expansion spell had a few odd side effects. I closed my eyes and reached inside, feeling around until I encountered a thick, heavy fabric, pulling it out to reveal a tan-colored winter button-up coat in the Russian style. I quickly undid my trenchcoat and set it on the ground, pulling off my soaked long-sleeve shirt and jeans and trading them in for a clean button-down white shirt and black slacks ensemble. I quickly stuffed my wet clothes in the bag and zipped it up, buttoning up my winter coat and sighing in relief as I was wrapped in insulating warmth.

I swung the bag onto my back and stepped out of the shed, shivering a little at the cold wash of air as it hit my ears. _Right_ , I thought as I shuffled through one of the extra pockets of the bag. _Now that I won't freeze to death, I need to seriously chew England out for this stupid mistake._ I thought with an ominous smirk, pulling out my phone and dialing. It only rang twice before my former mentor picked up, sounding surprised.

 _"That was quite fast. Is something wrong?"_ he asked in concern, and I smiled sweetly, even though he couldn't see it, as I walked towards the seemingly brighter-lit areas of the London suburbs.

"Oh no, not really. You just kinda sorta dropped me IN THE MIDDLE OF 19TH CENTURY LONDON!" I shrieked into the cellphone, and I heard him splutter.

 _"W-what?! Are you sure!?"_ he stammered in surprise, and I spared an irritated glare at a passing man who gave me an odd, suspicious glance.

"I'm pretty damn sure. For the love of God, all the buildings are less than three stories high and everyone is dressed like they're from the 1999 _Sleepy Hollow_."

_"Beg pardon?"_

"It's a movie about the legend of The Headless Horseman, set in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Really cool and gruesome and violent."

_"I'm sure. Do you know where you are in London?"_

I blinked and turned in a circle, taking in the street around me. It was late evening or early night, so a lot of the streetlamps were lit –actually, physically lit, since electricity was not quite yet invented or popularized if it was– and there weren't many people on the street or in the shops. Those who were out walking around all gave me strange looks, and the women with children took their offspring by the shoulder and pulled them away from me. I returned the strange looks with one of my own, before I realized that handheld phones hadn't been and wouldn't be invented for more than a hundred years and that to them, I was holding a strange glowing box to my ear, talking to thin air, and responding to nothing.

_And one raving madwoman point achieved already. Man, I work fast._

"I dunno, I can't find a street sign. Why?" I asked him, and there was a long pause.

 _"…I don't want to alarm you, but if you're in the East End, you might have problems. Its-"_ he began, but I interrupted him.

"I know, the East End is bad. I've read a bit on Jack the Ripper." I told him flippantly, briefly pausing to swing my bag onto the ground and reach inside for a pocketknife, before straightening up and putting it in my pocket. Best to be safe, after all. "Dude, I fought psychopaths and lived with a cannibal for almost a month. A bunch of cockney muggers is nothing." I told him confidently, but paused and stiffened as I heard a shout from behind me.

"Oy! You!"

I turned around, seeing a thickset man in what appeared to be a policeman's uniform marching towards me purposefully, and I gulped. "Sorry Britain, gotta go." I told him quickly and clicked the phone off, stuffing it in my bag and zipping it closed as I tried my best to appear angelically innocent.

"Yes sir?" I asked politely as he came to within a few feet of me, and he narrowed his eyes, tapping what looked like a nightstick against one hand.

"You attached to any household?" he asked me interrogatively, and I blinked twice.

"Um… _nooo?"_ I responded hesitantly, drawing the "no" out as long as I could and trailing off in a question.

He looked even more foreboding than before. "Is that satchel your property?" he asked in a quick shift of topic, and I narrowed my eyes and nodded.

"Yeah, it's mine. Bought and owned by me for like four years." I said defensively, tightening my grip on the straps, and I yelped as he grabbed me by the ear.

"Right, I don't like your look, vagrant." he said sternly as he started dragging me down the street, and I squeaked in protest.

"Hey! I'm not a vagrant!" I said indignantly, and the policeman gave me a withering look.

"Are you attached to any household?" he repeated, and I mutely shook my head. The policeman gave me a triumphant look as I was thrown into a cart. "Then you're a vagrant." he said simply, and I hit the floor facefirst with a _thud_.

"It's something, it's always _something…_ " I muttered, rubbing my head as I looked up at the rough wood of the cart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 12th, 2020, 8.46 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: November 15th, 2015, 1.30 PM USA Central Time


	2. That Butler, Jailbait

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who hadn't read the first fic, "poppet" is a term of endearment that was both the catchphrase and favorite word of the main villain of said previous fic.

_Arya's POV:_

Around half an hour later, I stared at the unsmoothed wood of the cart with a frown, holding myself still in a corner via my feet wedged against one wall and my back propped against the other, trying to wring out my hair. I had given up trying to stand, although there was room to do so, because if I did the cart would inevitably run over a bump and I'd get knocked on my ass. Calling England again was inadvisable, even though his advice would've been welcome, since talking to a "mysterious" glowing box would not help my case with the law enforcers.

If my hunch was correct, I'd been picked up because I ostensibly had no employment or place of residence, therefore making me a bum. If I remembered the fragments from my rather nerdy research on Jack the Ripper correctly –which would fit this time frame perfectly, even though Jack the Ripper had already vanished by the autumn of 1888 and the snow and ice proved it to be early winter at least– vagrants were taken to whatever police station had jurisdiction over the area they were found in, placed in holding, and more or less left there until whoever was in charge decided to put them somewhere else.

That somewhere else was usually a workhouse, and I made a face.

_Okay, maybe calling England **is** a good idea._

I quick opened my bag and pulled my phone out of one of the side pockets, flicking it open and starting to text. Luckily, the spell on the phone made it possible to not only text and call across dimensions, but also, as I had just discovered, work when I had no bars and cellphone coverage was a pipe dream of the future.

> Right, so I just got arrested for not being employed and wandering around on a public streets. Any ideas?

I typed out, waiting several seconds before receiving an answer.

  
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northe  


> Don't ever hang up on me like that again, you had me seriously concerned. Are you aware of the English laws regarding vagrancy?

I giggled a little –even under the circumstances– as I saw his tag, typing back. England's full name was so long that the little text bar couldn't encompass it all, but god forbid the mighty British Empire didn't at least _try_ to write out his full, legal, and formal name.

  
Rye-Rye  


> Yeah, I learned a bit about it this one year when I was obsessed with Jack the Ripper. I really don't want to end up wearing myself to the bone in some workhouse, so if you could find which world I DID get sent to, that'd be bitchin.

  
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northe  


> Dear God, I thought living with me cured you of your horrible Americanisms. But all that aside, I'll do what I can to see what world you were transported into instead of your own and perhaps lure a familiar face to your location. You said our world was an "anime", so perhaps this one is something similar. I'm entirely certain that, wherever you may have been transported to, it IS somewhere familiar. Dimension travel isn't my specialty, but I do know that to travel anywhere specific you have to have some kind of connection with that place. Even if we had an error in our spell that sent you wherever you are now, you would still have some manner of familiarity with that world or dimension.

I frowned anxiously as I realized something important, steadily typing out my response and grateful for the muting feature on my phone.

  
Rye-Rye  


> Since this isn't my world, isn't your world, and isn't the 2p!s' world, do you think that spell of yours sent them…here?

The response came swiftly, and I let out a big sigh of relief as I read it.

  
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northe  


> I would find that extremely implausible at best. There are literally hundreds of millions of worlds, and the likelihood that they got sent to the same one as you did is, well, nearly impossible. Besides, even if they WERE, materializing in the same city and the same district as you did? The odds are miniscule. No, for now, you should just go along with what the bobbies will want you to do. If you're worried about them searching your bag and finding something personal, don't: they'll just find a few clothes and other items –I was very thorough. But just in case, you should try to use this phone –and all other magic– as little as possible: we don't know what IS in this new world of yours. Head down, nose clean. I'm sure you'll know them when you see them, so I won't bother to tell you to look out for the person or persons I'll lure towards you.

I rolled my tongue between my teeth as I read the message, then nodded and turned my phone off, stowing it in my bag again. If I remembered my magic lessons correctly, England wouldn't do anything oblique, just use a magical qualifier to search out the "persons of familiarity", then establish a sort of "trace thread" between me and them, which would compel them –for whatever reason that most made sense– to wander towards whatever my current location was.

Of course, once I saw the person or people that I would apparently somehow know, I could cajole, bargain, or threaten my way into a slightly better position than "foreign homeless person who also happens to be a kinda cool apprentice magician" by virtue of my beforehand knowledge.

Kind of like any other _otaku_ would, had they been dropped into an anime world.

__

_***Time Skip***_

"Six trousers of varying colors and textures, seven shirts of varying lengths, colors, and textures. Three pairs of footwear: one white-black pair of unknown type and make-"

_That'd be sneakers, grandpa._

"-one pair of sturdy hiking books, and one pair made of unknown, shining material similar to rubber and having a bootlike shape."

_And those would be the galoshes._

"One dress of the Oriental variety. One black, lengthy coat. No skirts of any kind. No undergarments." a bespectacled British policeman sitting behind the counter before me said slowly, flicking through a piece of paper as my face turned red.

 _Did he have to say the last one in such a **judgmental** tone?_ I thought with an exasperated sigh as I held my thoroughly-searched apocalypse bag to my chest. Luckily for me, the bottomless spell on it still worked even when it was under an illusion, so the policemen hadn't found the Japanese fighting knife, Colt Action revolver (with bullets) and various other contraband and/or futuristic items I had hidden in there.

I sighed miserably as the policeman continued to read through my various "offenses" out loud, tuning him out.

 _Although I suppose since England was such a prude, underwear would count under "personal and private" stuff that needed to be hidden, even though that looks suspicious as hell to anyone who'd search my bag._ I thought dispassionately, pulling it over my shoulders.

"Any questions?" the man asked briskly, and I refocused on my interrogator, shaking my head quietly.

"No sir." I said politely, watching him raise one eyebrow and then nod towards where I assumed the holding cells to be. The policeman behind me –a different one than the guy who'd taken me in– nodded and took me by the arm, leading me towards the barred precincts as I swallowed as imperceptibly as I could.

"It's alright mam. Nothin' to fear from holding." he said in a thick London accent, obviously impressed and approving of with the meek and polite attitude I was intentionally exuding. I held back a smirk, looking down at the slightly grimy floor as my lips twitched slightly. Having shared a house with the living personification of the British Isles for over two months had taught me what prim and stuffy Englishmen would and would not tolerate, respond to, and approve of.

I sighed as I was gently pushed into a cell and the door locked, turning and giving a cordial wave to the policeman as he tipped his hat to me and walked off along the rows. The inside of the cell was dark and looked filthier than I wanted to contemplate, and I made a face as I set my bag down, turning to face the outside of the cell. England had said he would send the familiar-faced people here, so it stood to reason that they would be coming from the outside.

I wrapped my hands around the cold iron bars and peered out –my Russian coat was really quite phenomenal, I was barely cold at all except for my face and hands– looking for someone I recognized. My whole body stiffened as I felt someone grab my arm and whisper in my ear, my heart freezing in my chest.

" 'Ello, _poppet_."

I reacted instantly, slamming my free elbow behind myself and up as I heard a _crunch_ and a surprised shriek of pain, whirling and using the momentum of my whirl to push the person back, plunging my hand into my pocket and yanking out the pocketknife –which the policemen had probably not recognized as a knife, giving the folding mechanism– I had stored there earlier and brandishing it threateningly. I was halfway to slashing the guy's throat and sending him to the river of no return, before I realized that the dirty, unkempt man of middling age and obvious beer-belly lying on the floor was _definitely_ not the person I had feared and instinctively reacted to when I heard the word "poppet".

_Shit, I just knocked out some day laborer or something._

I made a face and rubbed the back of my neck as I stared down at the unconscious body, feeling inexplicably guilty, but then again, the guy had grabbed me with obvious ill intentions, not to mention the fact that he was in a holding cell of a police department, so it was probably for the best that I had knocked him out. I sighed and quickly grabbed him by the wrists, dragging him to the opposite side of the cell, before letting go and returning to my spot by the edge of the bars.

I sat down, cross-legged, and closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the bars.

What can I say, world-transportation made me sleepy, and the other guy probably wasn't going to wake up for another few hours at the earliest.

__

_***Time Skip***_

"-will not have these bloody savages detained in my station!"

I jerked, my eyes opening slightly as I glared at the bright reflection of the sunlight outside my line of vision.

 _That voice sounded…oddly familiar._

Remembering England's instructions, I quickly rubbed my eyes and shook myself awake, sitting up to see my cellmate –still asleep– and an odd influx of people rushing to and fro. Most of them seemed to be policemen and an odd amount of what looked to be Hindu men, most of them in tattered clothing and protesting at the top of their lungs. I blinked twice, my mouth moving wordlessly as I tried to figure that out, before a (possible) penny dropped and I swallowed hard.

 _Please tell me that I'm wrong._ I thought desperately, squeezing the bars harder and pressing my face against them, trying to see what was going on. A dark-haired man with his sideburns and hair slowly going to grey was standing at the end of the hallway, shouting at someone just beyond my line of vision. He looked and sounded quite vaguely familiar, as well as being the owner of the voice I had heard before, and I swallowed hard once more as he stalked around the corner.

"Lord Randall, it was far from my intention to inconvenience you in any way. These people attacked me on my way home: I thought you might wish to interrogate them on their possible connections to the case, however, if it is your intention to allow the possible culprit to go free, it's no business of mine." a cool voice answered him, and I nearabout swallowed my tongue when I saw a small boy with blue-black hair, who stood at about my shoulder, walk around the corner with Lord Randall, dressed in a chic black suit and top hat and with a simple black eyepatch adorning his right eye. He was followed by a tall, handsome pale man with short, fine black hair and deep red-hazel eyes, dressed in a black double-breasted walking coat, and wearing a look of semi-cold impassiveness.

 _Shit. No. No no no no no no no. Not this world. Not these two. Not the world of crazed Reapers and demonic contracts._ I thought desperately, clinging to the bars like a drug addict clinging to their last fix. The young boy was still trading politely-worded insults with Lord Randall, stopping less than a few feet away from the beginning of the hallway and still three or four cells away from my own. Sebastian –it _had_ to be Sebastian, nobody was that tall or that inhumanly perfect– stood at attention at the earl's side, his eyes wandering in tiny increments, probably bored with this whole affair.

I froze and tried to look innocent as they passed over me, then sharpened. His hazel eyes began to glow slightly red as his impassive look deepened into something more aggressive, and I blinked twice, then paled, the pieces quickly clicking together in my head as then I swallowed hard.

_Sebastian equals demon._

_Demons in the real world equals a magician's summoning._

_Living with a magician and learning magic equals a magician's aura._

_Most supernatural creatures can sense magician's auras._

_Demons usually aren't happy about being summoned, and carry an animosity towards magicians because of that._

"Aw, hells bells."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 12th, 2020, 9.05 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: November 16th, 2015, 8.50 PM USA Central Time


	3. That Butler, Oriental

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About Arya quietly (or not so quietly) freaking out about being in the Black Butler world, I personally think that Black Butler is an awesome world to read/watch/think about, but a not so awesome one to be in, especially for Aryana, who has had some interesting and rather nasty experiences with dimension travel. Not to mention that, at this point, Sebastian is only aware of the fact that she (might) be some kind of magician, and therefore has absolutely no reason to trust her at face value.

_Arya's POV:_

I swallowed hard, watching Sebastian narrow his eyes as he mutely stared me down, as if he was quietly and sadistically taking inventory of all my limbs and how they could best be removed from my torso if and when there were no witnesses present.

 _Right, so what did I learn about demonic protection spells and banishment?_ I thought frantically as I mentally scanned over the (few) incantations I'd memorized in my three months of magical teaching. I didn't dare move as I thought, frozen in place with my hands wrapped around the bars. It might've been almost a year since I last read the _Kuroshitsuji_ manga, but I did remember that Sebastian was capable of moving much faster than the human eye could track –and all it took to kill someone was a bit of pressure in the right place. Right now, I was in semi-view of witnesses. Even Mr. Perfect Demon Butler couldn't do something nasty if there were _witnesses_.

Then I made a face as I remembered that the extent of my magical education was limited to absorbing power and conducting it to a more experienced magician, as well as basic principles of communication with magical creatures, basic theory, and a few (also basic) protection spells.

 _It's not like anything I know would **kill** him –or any other kind of demon, really– but it'd slow him down, right?_ I thought hopefully, then gulped as Sebastian leaned down to Ciel's ear and whispered something, his eyes still fixed on me. The aristocratic Englishman raised an eyebrow at his butler, then turned to glance over at my cell, whereupon I gulped again and sincerely wished I'd learned how to turn myself invisible when I'd been learning magic. It wasn't like I was sorta kinda maybe a huge fan of _Black Butler_ (the sort of fan who was extremely devoted and nerdy, but you didn't hear it from me), but that was when all of the characters were safely fictional and, if offended by your supernatural allegiance, couldn't open a can of demonic whoop-ass on you the moment you got away from public viewing.

I watched nervously as Ciel spoke to Lord Randall quietly, gesturing in my direction. Demonic death or not, I wanted to be out of sight, and I ducked away from the bars, scooping up my bag and swinging it over my shoulder as I felt for my knife in one pocket. I heard footsteps quietly and deliberately approach, swallowing hard as I saw Sebastian appear with the keys, his image the very epitome of quiet, obedient butler. He opened the cell door and swung it open, smiling at me with all the innocence a demon could muster. "I'm so very sorry for any inconvenience you have suffered, Madam Representative." he said gallantly, half-bowing in my direction.

I blinked at him in bewilderment, my hand still wrapped tightly around the handle of my folded pocketknife.

_Angry demon-man say what?_

"It's not exactly an inspiration of confidence when the representatives of Funtom's American Branch cannot even remember where they were employed, and get picked up on the streets for vagrancy." Lord Randall snorted dismissively from just beyond my line of sight, and I saw the subtle twitch of Sebastian's eyebrow as he gazed at me impassively, the smile fading into a faint half-smirk. Apparently I was to play along.

"Um, yes sir." I said meekly, holding tightly onto my bag and edging nervously past the tall, pale man, completely and utterly unwilling to turn my back on him. My education on magical theorem leaned heavily on what supernatural creatures it was best to avoid and/or offend, and demons ranked very highly on that list, for several very good reasons. The most worrying for me at the present moment was the average demon's automatic dislike and/or hatred of magicians (or apprentices), followed closely by their sadistic personalities and penchant for violent vengeance.

I looked down at Ciel as I edged sideways a little, making sure Sebastian was in my left peripheral rather than directly behind me. The small, cold-eyed boy raked me up and down with his single remaining eye as I scuffed my foot on the ground, then it moved over to his butler. My skittishness around him was apparently not missed, and Ciel narrowed his blue eye, before sharply turning around and dismissing an irritated Lord Randall with a wave of his hand.

"You have the suspects, deal with them as you see fit." he said dismissively, and I jumped as I felt Sebastian's hand on my back, nudging me forward. I quickly edged away, looking over my shoulder to see him smile innocently. His hazel eyes quickly flashed red, then reverted to normal in another blink, and I swallowed hard.

Of all the ways for me to join up with the _Kuroshitsuji_ cast, this was probably the worst.

__

_***Time Skip***_

"Ah, I see you've made a new friend, my lord."

I jumped at the semi-familiar voice –only without the Russian accent– and looked up to see an Asian man in a turquoise _changshan_ smiling at us from what looked to be Ciel's carriage. His eyes were closed, and his short dark hair seemed to be a much more fluffy variety than Ciel's or Sebastian's.

I blinked twice, then smiled awkwardly to myself as I realized that Russia –who had given me the thick, warm winter coat that I still wore– and Lau –who was currently hanging out of the carriage and waving obliviously at us– had the same English voice actor in my world. Lau's voice had a subtly different sound than Jerry Jewel's though, a bit more Asian-sounding and slightly deeper.

 _Weird, but I guess that he's got to have his individuality somehow._ I decided absently as Sebastian handed Ciel into the carriage and I jumped in on my own.

It was even weirder to realize that Sebastian and _France_ , of all people, also shared the same voice actor.

As Sebastian climbed up to take control of the horses, I looked between the two males. Given as the carriage was a four-seater, I had to pick and choose my alliances carefully. Cranky 13-year old demon-commanding aristocrat, or unreadable opium-trafficking Chinese man who also had an odd propensity for violence? Granted, the violent bit depended on whether or not I was in the anime or the manga rendition of _Kuroshitsuji_ , but at this point, I was willing to go with what I knew and who was the most consistent throughout both mediums: Ciel Phantomhive. I swung my bag down at my feet and sat down beside the earl, giving him ample room as the carriage jolted into motion.

"So, it's been a while." Lau said conversationally, seemingly focusing on me with his innocent yet slightly unnerving smile. "Quite a while. I don't believe I've seen you since…well, you know what I mean." he continued knowingly as I swallowed, staring at him as Ciel glanced at the opium trader in cautious surprise. Lau's ominous air suddenly disappeared, and he tilted his head to the side slightly as his innocent smile grew. "So, who are you again?" he asked cheerfully, and I sweatdropped as Ciel smacked himself in the forehead, muttering something unflattering.

"Um, I'm Arya, Aryana Thompson. Nice to meet you." I said politely, holding out my hand, and Lau continued to smile obliviously as he took it.

"Oh, you're American?" he asked curiously as he shook my hand with a casual firmness, and I nodded with a slightly world-weary sigh.

"Ooh, goody. I'm Lau, and that over there is the Earl Phantomhive." he said with a nod in Ciel's direction, and I glanced over at the younger boy nervously. Ciel had his cheek resting on one fist, gazing out the window, and glanced over at us as Lau said his name.

"Miss Thompson is Funtom's American Branch representative." he said shortly, sticking to the previous cover story either he or Sebastian had cooked up, and Lau cocked his head as that disconcerting smile appeared on his face again.

"My my, the City Police's office is an odd place to find an official company manager." he said as he slipped back into that sneaky, ominous persona, and I gave an awkward half-laugh, rubbing the back of my neck, as Ciel fixed his cold glare on Lau.

"The blunders of Scotland Yard are no business of yours, Lau." was all he said, before looking out the window again.

We spent the rest of the ride in silence, while I tried (in vain) to figure out from the clues I had been given thus far about whether or not I was in the manga or the anime. I was roughly 90% certain that we were past the Jack the Ripper Arc –thank god– and since Ciel and Sebastian had been at a police station, accompanied by an influx of Hindustan East Enders, I wagered that I had been dropped into the _Kuroshitsuji_ universe sometime around the Curry Arc. I would have to wait for confirmation one way or another until A) I went to or saw the curry competition, and Queen Victoria either had the psycho angel Ash or one of the Double Charles as her butler, or B) after the curry competition, Ciel was invited to the circus and/or a haunted mansion.

To be brutally honest, I was on the fence about which one I wanted to be in. The anime was slightly less dangerous, but it was also kinda _fucked up_. Seriously, that dual angel pair Ash and Angela creeped the hell out of me. The manga was less crazy, but it also had a semi-sociopathic Sebastian, reanimated dead corpses, a (possibly) evilly plotting Undertaker, and other _lovely_ elements.

Honestly, it was a toss-up which was worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 12th, 2020, 9.12 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: November 18th, 2015, 8.42 PM USA Central Time


	4. That Butler, Fitting In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It completely slipped my mind up until now, but I realized that I never told you guys that in my previous fic the Trekker, all of the magical chants were actually the lyrics of various character videos –usually Britain's. I also checked a book on Victorian customs and suchlike out at the library, so I am now at least theoretically able to detail Arya's exploits with accuracy. It's not like we're striving for too much though, because A) it was only one book and B) that's really not the big deal here. I just don't want Aryana or the others to do something illogical for the time period. Also, for the bit about clothing and legs, I don't know how true it actually was (my research tended to imply that, while true, it was exaggerated) but in the manga, they do make a joke out of it several times, so I just went with that. Also, as that may show, I am planning on going with the manga version of events.

_3rd Person POV:_

Ciel waited somewhat impatiently as Lord Randall continued to rant about the young earl's complete and utter lack of diplomacy and common sense, wanting to get back to the townhouse as soon as possible. He'd been summoned to London for an absolutely _ridiculous_ task and now, out of politeness, was forced to listen to the irritable Commissioner Randall as he ranted on and on about –well, to be honest, he was just ranting because he disliked the House of Phantomhive.

Mid-rant, he felt Sebastian lean down over his shoulder.

 _"Young master, there is someone of interest within that cell."_ the demonic man whispered softly in his ear, indicating a cell further down the hall, and Ciel turned to him, raising an eyebrow silently.

Sebastian smiled down at the earl, his mouth stretching in that subtle, sardonic smirk of his. "I believe you would find it most entertaining." he added, and Ciel rolled his one remaining eye slightly.

"Lord Randall?" he requested suddenly, making the older gentleman pause mid-sentence. He nodded towards the cell Sebastian had indicated. "Apparently one of my company representatives has gotten taken in by your men. I'd like them to be released." he said firmly, making the lie up on the spot as he gestured towards the cells.

Lord Randall glared at him for a moment, slowly folding his arms. "Why would one of _your_ company's managers end up in our jurisdiction?" he asked skeptically, and Ciel's eye twitched slightly. He disliked making up complicated lies on the spot without any previous information.

"They're quite forgetful: it's been a problem before." he said, lying through his teeth, and Lord Randall gestured curtly to one of the uniformed officers, who handed the keys to an angelically smiling Sebastian.

Ciel's eye twitched again. His butler only smiled like that when he was about to A) do something extraordinarily disruptive to Ciel's plans or B) do something that was sure to cause problems in the future. The two were not always mutually exclusive, either.

Ciel barely kept his eyebrow in check as a young blonde girl –although older than him by several years– was escorted out of the cell by Sebastian.

"It's not exactly an inspiration of confidence when the representatives of Funtom's American Branch cannot even remember where they were employed, and get picked up on the streets for vagrancy." Lord Randall snorted from behind him.

"Um, yes sir." The blonde said meekly, holding tightly onto some kind of satchel and edging sideways around the tall butler. Ciel's eye narrowed. He'd yet to see a female act nervous around the supernaturally handsome butler: much as he hated to admit it, Sebastian seemed to have been correct about something being _off_.

The female's appearance kept in form with the more or less alternating ordinary and extra-ordinary aura. Her blonde hair hung around her face like she had been dunked in water, but it looked like it would be slightly wavy if it had been given the chance: but where and how she had gotten so soaked in the depths of winter, that was an alarming question. She wore an ankle-length cream-and-tan overcoat which completely enveloped her form, ending in a pair of utterly strange, but well-made shoes –he had no opinion on the coat, as it seemed to be of foreign make. Her eyes were honey-brown and her skin looked slightly pale, her fingers wrapped in thin medical bandages.

It was a strange picture: the coat was well made, the shoes odd but obviously of high quality, and yet by her drenched and bedraggled appearance she looked as though she had nothing to shelter her from the elements –her hands were injured in the way no woman of birth high enough to purchase such items would be wounded– and yet she was clean, and wore the garments with no self-consciousness or guilt. He couldn't see what she was wearing under the long coat, although, given the rest of her contradictory appearance, it was probably a similar dichotomy.

It was...odd. Suspicious, even.

"You have the suspects, deal with them as you see fit." he finally said to Lord Randall, before turning around and waving his follower –and new attachment– forward with him.

_Arya's POV:_

"We labored in vain…and now it's begun to snow." Ciel muttered wearily as Sebastian took his coat and hat, marching into the foyer of the large townhouse as Lau and I trailed behind. It'd taken all day to travel back to his place of residence, and, as Ciel had complained, it was snowing.

"The culprit might be among them. Let us wait for Lord Randall to contact us." Sebastian said smoothly, then turned to me. "May I take your coat?" he asked, extending a hand, and I reached for the buttons, before freezing in place.

 _Wait, what was the Victorian policy on a woman wearing pants?_ I thought frantically as Sebastian stopped moving, raising one elegant eyebrow at me.

"Something wrong?" he asked politely as that demonic red light flickered in his eyes again, showing his insincerity, and I smiled awkwardly.

"Um…ehehe…Is there a maid or something like that for me to talk to?" I asked sheepishly, rubbing the back of my head, and Sebastian turned, clapping his hands sharply.

"Mey-rin!" he called, and I swallowed gratefully as I saw the maid scamper out from around the corner, where I _thought_ I could glimpse Finny and Bardroy ducking behind the wall, probably to avoid being chewed out by the ultra-efficient butler.

"Sir yes sir!" she chirped happily, and I gave her an awkward wave as Sebastian indicated me.

"Um…I don't suppose you have any spare skirts or something?" I whispered, leaning in closer to her as she turned pink.

"Um…well, why is that?!" she squeaked, leaning closer with me.

"I'm sorta not wearing a dress or anything under this coat." I said sheepishly, and she turned red.

"I mean, I've got trousers and a shirt on, just not a dress!" I added quickly, and her cherry-red face lightened slightly in color.

"Mister Sebastian, our guest is coming with me right now, yes she is!" she blurted loudly, grabbing me by the elbow and hauling me towards some other part of the estate. I could see Sebastian smirking subtly, as if he had heard our conversation –which he probably had, being a supernatural being n' all that. I could also hear Lau and Ciel talking behind him.

_"I'm tired of being summoned to London every time a silly incident like this occurs!"_

_"You must howl if there is even the faintest possibility of harm befalling Her Majesty. Such is the…"_

"I can't let a guest not have the proper attire, its indecent, yes it is!" Mey-rin said indignantly to herself as she dragged me along and I lost the audio from the hall, and I sweatdropped.

"Well, its normal where I come from…" I muttered under my breath, and she looked over her shoulder.

"Did you say something?" she asked, and I affixed an innocent smile on my face.

"Nah, I didn't say nothin'." I said happily, before she pushed me into some kind of clothing room.

"Right, so take off your coat, Miss…um, what was your name again?" she said professionally, then trailed off and looked uncertainly at me through her thick glasses. I took pity on her and gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up.

"Name's Arya, Aryana Thompson. I'm fresh in from America, got lost, fell in the Thames…" I trailed off slowly, uncertain of whether to not to stick to Sebastian and Ciel's cover story. Not that I was complaining about the convenient cover story and subsequent liberation from the holding cell, I was just mildly suspicious of the circumstances. Neither Sebastian nor Ciel _ever_ gave out free favors.

_Well, guess I'll just roll with it for now._

"…forgot about my appointment, got picked up by the bobbies, and Lord Phantomhive found me and got me out on the way back to the mansion." I rattled off, and she smiled, fidgeting with the edges of her thick glasses.

"Well, we'll find you a nice new dress, yes we will. You seem to be about my size, so we can let you have something of mine until we get a tailor to make you up something. Any favorite colors?" she asked cheerfully, turning to the large wardrobe. I shrugged dismissively.

"Eh, anything that won't make me indecent." I said flippantly, watching her rummage around inside of it. She turned to face me, holding a starchy-looking maid dress in one hand.

"Try this on; it suits you, yes it does." she said with a helpful smile.

The next ten or so minutes were characterized by extreme awkwardness and questioning on both sides as well as much cursing (on my part) as I tried to figure out how to put on an old-fashioned dress and much squawking (on Mey-rin's part) as she saw that I didn't wear (from what I heard amidst the splutters) a chemise, drawers, or whatever the hell else Ye Olde women were supposed to wear underneath their dresses.

After much blood, sweat, and tears, I was finally encased in a trim blue dress and my previous outfit, including my nice warm coat, was packed away in my bag. Since it was Mey-rin's, it was too loose in the chest and only came down to just above my calves, but still, if the Victorian's were going to be freaked out about me not wearing skirts, then this was infinitely preferable to the one Chinese dress I _did_ have, which, although fantastically awesome and embroidered, also had slit sides that showed one's _legs_. Mey-rin's protests had proven to me that yes, this was the famous time period in Great Britain when the legs were considered the most obscene and suggestive parts of the human body.

 _Just roll with it, just roll with it…_ I reminded myself over and over again with my teeth gritted in frustration, trotting after Mey-rin and hauling my apocalypse bag behind me. If nothing else, England could probably send me a picture of the sigil with which to get home, and if not home, at least somewhere where wearing pants was not utterly taboo for someone of my gender.

"We'll set you up in this nice room, and you can be all rested for tomorrow, yes you can!" she said cheerfully, opening the door on a very nice bedroom, as far as Victorian standards went.

"You have a nice night!" Mey-rin added, giving me a smile and wave as she closed the door behind her. Since I'd spent several months in a very similar bedroom, although modernized, I didn't have a problem with it and, tossing my bag on the floor nearby, collapsed facefirst onto the nice, soft, cushy bed. It only took about three more seconds for me to fall dead asleep, completely forgetting that I hadn't taken any measures to involve or ingrain myself with the demonic, semi-magical populace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 12th, 2020, 9.19 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: November 21st, 2015, 2.46 PM USA Central Time


	5. That Butler, At Midnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Naan bread is a kind of sort of fluffy, flat type of Indian bread that tastes absolutely awesome, I can't even begin to describe it. I had some at Disney World in Florida, and while that means it might not exactly have been accurate, it still tasted bloody awesome. And yes, I get the irony of Arya's statement about fanfiction at the bottom. I put it in there on purpose, because it made me laugh. Aryana has now become self aware and is cussing me out.
> 
> Also, the "fuck all kinds of duck" line at the end is a reference to the witty and noble TeamFourStar Hellsing abridged, not Markiplier. There's been some confusion on that one in the past, apparently.

Arya's POV:

"Wshshsh…zzz…" I snored, my face buried in the soft, warm, and slightly herb-smelling pillow and my body covered by an equally warm, fluffy blanket. There was nothing quite as awesome as sleeping in a comfy bed, especially after being dunked in a polluted, icy river and then being dragged to jail. I had spent an unwelcome portion of the last few months sleeping badly, whether because of the sorcerous cannibal that owned the house I slept in (long story), wounds caused by said cannibal, or because I was stuck on a different timezone then the place I was sleeping in. But now neither of these things had happened, and I was _absolutely content_ …

 **WHAM**.

 **BAM**.

"MISTER SEBASTIAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

I groaned as the sound of multiple pairs of feet thundered past my room, yanking the quilted blanket up over my head. _It's something, it's always bloody something…_ I thought with another groan, before yanking the blankets down and blearily glaring at the thick wooden door.

I stood up and threw the blankets off, quickly raking my fingers through my hair as I stalked over to the door in place of actually brushing it. Thankfully, I hadn't taken the dress off, and I could throw the door open and stalk down the paneled corridor with impunity.

I increased my pace as the sound of running got further away, and finally came to a halt with the others in front of what looked to be Ciel's bedroom. I stared blankly as I saw Mey-rin, Bardroy, and Finny screech to a halt in front of the butler of the household and Lau, with Ciel cursing and struggling in the grip of Agni a few feet away.

"You three, you are in the presence of our guests." Sebastian scolded, turning away from Lau. "What is it? Has something happened again-" he started, but the three of them interrupted him, all talking at once.

"Something's wrong! Really, really wrong!"

"Crazy wrong!"

"Wrong it is!"

"The food, its-"

"The garden, its-"

"The laundry, its-"

Sebastian blinked at the trio of other servants as they continued to babble and panic. "Wrong…?" he repeated, deadpan, as if it was a condition he was altogether unfamiliar with. He looked out the nearby windows, swiftly turning to pace around the townhouse as we all followed behind.

A really fancy breakfast was already cooked, and the garden was trimmed, with snow sculptures in the shape of elephants all over, and a bunch of freshly laundered sheets were flapping in the wind. Sebastian stared at all these changes.

"What in the world…?" he muttered to himself, and Agni smiled.

"Ah! I have taken the liberty of handling the morning chores!" he said cheerfully, and Sebastian frowned slightly, walking over to him.

"You should not have! You are our guest, so please make yourself at home." he reprimanded as Lau and I looked around at all the improvements, while the three servants just stared in awe at Sebastian and Agni.

The aforementioned Hindustan man smiled proudly. "My prince aside, I am merely a butler, so I felt it my duty to help Mister Sebastian." he said sincerely as he bowed a little bit, then stood there smiling as Sebastian stared at him for a few moments.

"Mister Agni…" he said in awe, before turning around and "smiling" at the three Phantomhive servants. "Why do you three not kowtow and beg Mister Agni for the dirt under his nails?" he asked sweetly. "Your lives might gain a little value that way."

All three of them froze for a few seconds, then tackled Agni, all shouting at once.

"Gimme the dirt under your nails, dirt!"

"Me too!"

"Me three!"

"Eh?! What is going on?!" Agni squeaked as he was buried under a pile of shouting bodies, and I snickered as Sebastian turned away, a subtly exasperated look on his face.

_***Time Skip***_

"So?" Ciel asked as I tentatively poked at the steaming food on my plate. Ciel, Soma, Lau, and I were all seated at the dinner table, eating shrimp curry and French toast with ginger. Ciel was at the head of the table, with Soma at the other end, being served by Agni. Lau and I were seated at the longer side of the table, with our backs to the fireplace behind us, Lau at the side closer to Ciel, me at the side closer to Soma.

"How long do you intend to stay here?" Ciel continued irritably as I decided that Sebastian probably wouldn't have poisoned the food since Agni had been the one to cook it, taking a huge forkful and chewing thoughtfully. It wasn't half bad, if a bit spicy.

"We'll leave when we've finished our errand." Soma said as he chewed on some naan bread, confirming that this indeed was the Curry Arc. Ciel grew a tick mark.

"That-" he began, but was cut off by Lau.

"You mean the person you were looking for before, right?" he asked, leaning past me, and Ciel glared at the Chinese man irritably.

"And why are _you_ staying over as w-" he tried again, but Soma cut him off.

"Yes. I'm in search of a certain woman. This one." he said anxiously, holding out the worst drawing of a woman (or anything else, for that matter) that I had ever seen in my life. I choked on my food as Lau hid a smile behind his long sleeve, passing the paper on to Ciel. "Her name is Mina and she was a servant in my palace." Soma added, and Ciel and Sebastian sweatdropped slightly as they looked at it.

"This is…" Sebastian began diplomatically as Soma finished eating his bread with a crunch.

"I drew it. You'll know right away when you see her because I drew her so well! Isn't she lovely?" he asked, and Ciel looked at his butler.

"Sebastian, will you be able to seek her out with this?" he asked gloomily, and Sebastian looked at the doodle with misgiving.

"Even for me, this is a bit, erm…well, I shall try." he compromised, and Lau took the paper from them, tilting it one way and then another.

"Oooh…I myself have never encountered a beauty like this, I saaaay!" he commented with a slight snicker, and I tried very hard to muffle my laughter with the curry so I wouldn't offend anyone.

"To be expected!" Soma said proudly, completely missing the buried insult. "She was the most beautiful woman in my palace."

Sebastian took the paper from Lau again and studied it as Ciel set his fork down. "So why is that woman in Great Britain?"

Lau and I looked on as Soma and Agni began loudly praying to an idol, with Ciel grew another large tick mark.

"Listen to me!" he barked, as we all crowded around and watched them bow to the odd-looking statue. "What are they doing all of a sudden? Where did they get the statue from?!" Ciel added with a hiss in frustration as Lau scratched his head.

"They seem to be praying, but their object of worship seems quite surreal." the Chinaman commented, and I chewed happily on the naan bread Soma had left untouched. It really was quite good.

"You would call that an object of worship?" Sebastian muttered skeptically, cupping his chin with one gloved hand. "It looks nothing so much as a statue of a woman dancing in a frenzy on the abdomen of a man whilst carrying severed heads and wearing a necklace of said heads…to me." he added witheringly, and Lau smiled.

"Pretty much!" he agreed happily, and I sweatdropped again from beside them.

"This is a statue of the goddess Kali, a deity of Hinduism, our faith." Agni explained happily, and Ciel sighed wearily.

"So it is an Indian god." he muttered, and Agni turned away from the statue.

"Our goddess Kali is the wife of the god Shiva and the goddess of strength. She protects against misfortunes, there are also other divine favors. In ancient times, a devil dared to challenge the goddess in a battle. Of course, the goddess was victorious…"

I tuned Agni out as I continued eating; not that I didn't like the story or anything, but mostly because I still had no idea why Ciel had invited me into his household and come up with that oddly convenient cover story, and I needed to plan things out. It was also, quite honestly, hellza suspicious that I hadn't been immediately popped down to the Victorian equivalent of a bare concrete room with a table, two folding chairs, a one-way mirror, and a single ominously flickering overhead lightbulb. Ciel just didn't leave loose ends like that: I was a complete stranger just sort of... _hanging_ (no relation to the curry incidents) at his place, and unless he was lulling me into a false sense of security, it was beyond strange that Ciel hadn't at least asked me who the heck I actually was. Hence, counter-planning to avoid an interrogation in the days before the Geneva Convention.

Violent action was right out, since attacking Ciel would bring Sebastian's full and awful wrath upon me, not to mention it just sort of felt _wrong_ to attack an anime character. Like suckerpunching a non-evil character from _Disney_.

Sneakiness was probably a bad idea too, since I wasn't quite sure what their motives were and going up against Ciel Phantomhive, the Lord of Games, in a strategy contest was _definitely_ not my cup of tea. Continuing as I was right now was also a possibility, but I was leery of being that passive around a demon I knew was capable of murder. Being that laidback around Ragnarok from _Soul Eater_ , maybe, but only if he was in chibi form.

I sighed heavily.

_Well, looks like I'm gonna have to wing it...just like always._

__

_***Time Skip***_

Having obtained permission from Ciel, just before he was dragged off by Soma and Sebastian to start the round of chores that would culminate in a fencing battle, I was currently in the mega-huge library of the Phantomhive townhouse, looking for a spellbook. Any spellbook at all, really.

The ones I had read in England's world were all just basic grounding for any and all topics, and I had skimmed over the (extremely few) volumes on demons my teacher had allowed me to have, not out of any dismissive feelings on demons, but more because they were all in the Ye-Oldest Olde English humanly possible, and I could barely read it. Hopefully, if there were any books on magic and/or demons here, they would be a bit more legible.

My face brightened as I saw a likely-looking volume, and I pulled it out of the shelf. As I had hoped and expected, Ciel had some research material on supernatural entities –probably because of what he had serving as his butler. A thorough searching of the same bookcase revealed six or seven more volumes, and I quickly gathered them up and laid them down with a _thump_ on the nearby wooden table, going to another shelf and doing the same thing again and again, until the whole table was filled with paper and hardcover volumes. There were no chairs, but I could make do, and I cracked open the first book.

Latin.

I stared at the book for a few seconds, before closing it with a snap. I had learned a smidge of Latin when England taught me basic runes, but I only knew words, not sentences, grammar, or how to construct any of the above. I stared at the rest of the pile with misgiving, before slowly setting the first book to the side.

 _Okay, that was probably just a fluke, right? I mean, it's not like every magic book is Latin._ I thought tentatively, picking up the next book in the pile and cracking it open.

Latin again.

_Okay, fuck this._

I grabbed the next few books off the pile, flipping them open one by one.

_Latin._

_Latin._

_Greek._

_Latin._

_French, I think…?_

_Latin._

_Latin._

_Greek._

_Greek._

_Some kind of runic language?_

_Greek._

_Latin._

I finally slammed the last book shut with a curse, looking at the huge pile irritably. My knowledge of both Greek and Latin was basically nill, and I didn't know more than two or three words in French.

 _Goddamnit._ I thought with an exasperated sigh, pinching my nose as I tried to think. This was not a major obstacle. This was not a major obstacle. I could learn Latin. It couldn't be that hard, right? I already knew German and a little bit of Italian. But then I would face the problem of the books potentially being useless, and me having wasted all that time learning a language for nothing…

_Goddamnit, there really are no easy decisions here._

I sat down on the hard wooden floor and sucked in a few deep breathes, trying to think. Hypothetically, if I remained a part of Ciel's household, I could use the money and connections thereof to find some occultists –I knew there were a lot of them about, since they played a very big part in certain sections of the manga– and buy the necessary spellbooks. I didn't know what those spellbooks would be, since England had deemed the world-transport spell too complicated for me to learn. I could text him and find out, or better yet, have him send me a picture of the previous sigil we had used.

If Ciel kicked me out for one reason or another, I could, somehow, buy or threaten my way to Germany, where I t least knew there would be a bunch of genuine occultists, as exemplified in the Emerald Witch Arc. _They were in the southern portions of Germany, right? Ah, who cares. If and when I need to go there, I can simply ask around. The witches live in a haunted forest –I'm sure that'd be pretty famous._

I sighed and rubbed my forehead, feeling a headache coming on. The characters in all the fanfictions I'd read had this whole dimension-switch thing so much easier than me: opportunities just seemed to drop right into their laps. Of course, that was probably the fault of the writers who created them, all of whom more or less _liked_ their self-inserts or OCs or whatever they put in there, and did their noble best to keep them alive and in good health. They also usually had a romance or two in the offing, but hey, I wasn't going to judge. All I knew was that if someone was psychotic enough to write my story, and dumb enough to star me as the main character, they'd probably either get kicked off their account by traumatized viewers or be bombarded with so many flames they'd spontaneously combust.

I blinked as I realized that the room had gotten extremely dark, and realized I had probably been in the library for hours. The only light came from the nearby candlestick and the large window, which let off the weak, watery glow characteristic of moonlight.

I quickly got my legs out from underneath myself and stood, blinking a little as I walked away from the table and passed the comparatively bright candles. When I pushed open the door with a creak, the dark corridors revealed that it was, indeed, night.

I pushed my sleeve up, looking at the softly glowing watch strapped to my wrist. It was luckily waterproof, or else it would've been destroyed by my plunge in the river, and I felt around the rim, before clicking a button as a powerful white LED light flashed from the northernmost edge. It was a flashlight feature I hadn't yet gotten the chance to try, and I was pleased with how well it worked. (It was another birthday present, this time from Germany.)

I crept along the hallway quietly, trying to find my way via memory back to either my room or somewhere inhabited by human beings (and/or demons, if I got desperate enough).

After what felt like several minutes of wandering around the dark, wood-paneled corridors, I heard familiar voices, and I let out a faint sigh of relief and walked a little more quickly, switching off the light. It wasn't like I was trying to sneak up on anyone or anything like that, it was just that, again, I figured it was probably best to show as little modern appliances and technology to the lovely, rightfully-superstitious people of 19th-century England.

I recognized one voice as Ciel's, and slowed uncertainly as I came to a halt in front of one of the heavy, wooden doors.

A month-long, forced confinement with a psychopath made sneaky, bad habits that were hard to break.

Berating myself for being a spying, no-good idiot who was listening to someone else's conversation for no absolutely no real reason, I inched closer to the door and peeped through the tiny crack between the old-fashioned doors. Again, force of habit was hard to break, and sometimes the only way to get good information was to eavesdrop.

My angle was bad, but I could hear Ciel talking irritably, which to be both unfair and charitable, was his most common tone. It sounded like he was talking to Lau, and it also sounded like it was something involving the British "underworld" that Ciel ruled.

"I've left management of the Oriental Quarter to you. So you would have an idea of the number of people coming and going from the suspect areas." the small earl snapped, and I frowned as I tried to catch Lau's answer. It was too quiet for me to hear, though, and I cursed soundlessly in frustration.

A hand suddenly landed on my shoulder as I jumped roughly a mile high and squeaked, hearing the familiar, ominous voice behind me.

"And what would you be doing up at such a late hour, listening in on my young master?"

_Oh, fuck all kinds of duck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 12th, 2020, 9.33 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: November 26th, 2015, USA Central Time


	6. That Butler, Caught In the Act

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for the part about the year, Arya's math is actually off by a bit. 1888 was actually only 127 years ago at the original time of writing this, not 200, but then again, she was probably tired at the time and rounding is always easier. I didn't want to state the actual year because ten to one there will be multiple people reading this when it is no longer the year I wrote it in, and I'm too lazy to be going back and changing the date every year. Lazy me is lazy.

_Arya's POV:_

I nearly broke my neck as I whipped my head around, seeing Sebastian smiling innocently, but with a flat red gleam behind his eyes. Before I could stop him, he shoved the door open, and I gulped as I saw Ciel turn, recognize me, and frown suspicously. Lau was stationed by the window, smiling happily now that he was no longer the object of discussion.

"It seems you had an uninvited eavesdropper." Sebastian said to his master as he scooted me into the room, and I gave Ciel a nervous, terrified smile.

"Um, listen, this isn't what it looks like-" I began hastily, but he cut me off with a raised hand.

"Sebastian," he said deliberately, looking at the butler instead of me. "Why did you wish for me to bring this woman to my mansion?"

I could _feel_ Sebastian's "innocent" smile from above me.

"She's a magician, my lord." he said angelically, and I saw Ciel's one remaining eye widen sharply. I suddenly realized that while Sebastian only had an instinctive, somewhat casual animosity towards me, Ciel had suffered quite greatly at the hands of the large group of "magicians" who had used him and others to summon Sebastian in the first place. (Personally, I was still somewhat skeptical of their magical prowess, because no sorcerer _I'd_ ever known –and I'd known three good ones and one _majorly_ evil one, not to mention read the works of dozens of others– would have _ever_ called a demon a "noble beast". Or, for that matter, a "noble" _anything_.)

I also realized that Ciel was thusly probably only a few seconds away from telling Sebastian to snap my neck like a twig.

"I'm only an apprentice!" I blurted, and Ciel closed his mouth, looking at me with wary hatred.

Lau suddenly chimed in from the window, and I jumped, having completely forgotten his presence. "Oh~? A real magician? Can you levitate?" he asked cheerily, and I laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of my neck.

"Um, not myself, no…"

Lau tilted his head to the side, still smiling.

"Can you cast fire?"

"Not at the moment."

"Can you hypnotize someone?"

"Yeeeeah…no."

"Can you multiply objects?"

"No. Why would I?"

"Can you-"

"That's enough!" Ciel barked angrily, startling the both of us.

He glared at Lau, pointing to the far door. "This is no business of yours, so why don't you make yourself useful and see to it that the stupid prince wouldn't come in here?" he spat, and Lau pouted, pushing away from the wall.

"Bye bye magician~! It was nice knowing you!" he said cheerfully as he passed me, ruffling my hair without turning around or looking back, and I watched helplessly as the only neutral party walked out the door and closed it behind him. Ciel returned his glare to me and/or Sebastian, and he curtly gestured to the chair in front of him. I nervously jerked away from the demonic butler and sat down, desperately attempting to come up with a plausible cover story that wouldn't get me killed.

Ciel Phantomhive crossed his legs and intertwined his fingers, resting his chin on them as he looked at me piercingly. "Are you aware of the recent incidents occurring in London?" he asked briskly, and I decided a bit of deliberate naiveté was necessary.

"You're talking about that whole thing with Jack the Ripper?" I asked innocently, and his eye narrowed.

"If you _are_ an American, what are you doing in England?" he asked, shifting topics without pressing for my answer, and I licked my lips.

"To be honest…I have no idea." I said slowly, a story forming in my mind. "I actually have no idea what I'm doing here at all."

Ciel raised an eyebrow, prompting me to elaborate.

I sighed and shifted awkwardly in my seat, before looking him dead in the eye. "I know you have a demon as a butler, but do you believe in real magic? Serious magic?" I asked him seriously, and something flickered in his eye.

"I will reserve my belief until I am offered concrete proof." he said coldly, and I ran my tongue over my lower lip.

"Well…um, here goes, I guess." I said sheepishly, and inhaled once before speaking again. _Call on the fanfic clichés, call on the fanfic clichés._

"I'm not from this…world. Dimension. Whatever you wanna call it." I told Ciel, watching him snort in disbelief. "I'm serious. The world I'm from doesn't have any kind of magic or demons or anything supernatural at all, and it's like 200 years in the future. I accidently got transported to different world, where I was taken in by an English…spirit. Thing."

Explaining the concept of the Hetalian "nation avatar" was probably a bad (not to mention irrelevant) idea, so I didn't bother.

"He taught me a few basic tricks and whatnot, then found out a spell that he thought would send me back to my world, but it…didn't, as I'm fairly sure you can tell." I added sheepishly, scratching my cheek. "I did learn enough to recognize that this –um, Sebastian, was it?– was a demon, and I know the basics of spellcasting, but that's pretty much it." I finished, looking Ciel straight in the eye and doing my be-damned best to seem honest.

It was depressingly easy, and I made a mental note to myself to stop spontaneously lying as soon as it was safe to do so. I'd started out with the basics, white-lying to people coming to the hotel I worked at and on the rare occasion covering for someone who was having a fling, but I had swiftly upgraded to just-barely-bullshitting a psychopathic British cannibal (who was also holding me prisoner and torturing me at the time) straight to his face, and just now graduated to fabricating a story in front of a demon that, for over 20 manga volumes, I had never seen fail at his job.

My eye twitched slightly. _I really am far too good at this. Honesty is the best policy. As soon as it's safe again, i.e. not around these two, I am **so** going straight._ I thought firmly, then blinked as Ciel beckoned Sebastian over to him and the two whispered together for several minutes, occasionally glancing over at me. I smiled nervously and very much hoped that I wouldn't be chased from the mansion by an angry (or indeed in any other mood) demonic butler.

Sebastian finally smirked, backing away from Ciel with a bow, as the young Phantomhive looked at me piercingly. "Is the spirit that taught you magic in communication with you?" he asked briskly, and I thought of my phone, the battery slowly draining away without any kind of charging outlet available, and Britain's admonishment about using it.

"Um, I think I can only reach him if it's an emergency." I said slowly, then watched Ciel think, his expression brooding as I could practically _feel_ the raw intelligence radiating off of him as he wove plots and counter-plots.

It was kinda creepy to realize that even though he was –at the least– four years younger than me, _he_ was the one in charge here, in charge of me, in charge of Sebastian, in charge of everything.

"What is your goal here? Is there something you're trying to accomplish?" he eventually asked out loud, still staring me down. I blinked at him for a few moments, then shrugged in a dismissive sort of way, looking over his shoulder as I did. It was hard to meet that piercing blue gaze for long periods of time.

"I wanna get back to my dimension." I said firmly, and Ciel laced his fingers together, resting his chin on them.

"What would you need to accomplish that?" he asked, seeming genuinely curious. I began to feel slightly hopeful. The plan I had of asking him to find magic books (or doing it myself) might, just might, work.

"Um, I'm gonna need to keep learning magic. I didn't know much spells, and only my teacher knew the one he used tried to send me back. I could recreate it with enough study and practice." I told him confidently, and Ciel stared at me for a few seconds more, obviously thinking.

"I don't trust you." he finally said blatantly, his thoughtful look finally changing to one of dislike, which he aimed at me irritably. "The story you just told me is absolutely preposterous and you'd be a fool if you expected me to believe it." he continued devastatingly as I winced: however, a faint smirk grew on Ciel's face. "However, if you are a real magician, you may be of some use to me. We'll renegotiate the terms of your stay here once Sebastian has confirmed something for me –in the meantime, he will take you to your rooms."

Ciel waved a beringed hand at Sebastian, who took it as the cue it was and approached me as I hurriedly got to my feet.

"Thanks." I said anxiosuly as Sebastian shepherded me forward, but paused at a call from Ciel.

"And Madam Thompson?"

I turned around, frowning nervously. "Yeah?" I asked as Sebastian waited behind me.

Ciel's smile had all the icy friendliness of a snake. "I'll let you off this one time because you didn't know me or my household. But the next time I catch you spying on me, I'll have Sebastian dangle you from the rooftops."

I gulped hard. "Sir yes sir."

_Scary thing was he'd probably do it, too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 12th, 2020, 9.42 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: December 4th, 2015, 12.27 PM USA Central Time


	7. That Butler, Morning Magic

_Arya's POV:_

I would like the ladies and gentlemen of the court to know that, after Sebastian escorted back to my room for the night, I stayed in there like a fricking angel. I wrestled the buttons and laces and whatever-the-fuck-else apart on the dress and (almost literally) climbed out of it, before draping it as neatly as I could on the nearby chair.

_No reason not to be tidy about things._

Once I had gotten into my combat pajamas, consisting of a rather worn black tank top and old army fatigues –which was a blessed relief, after all the starchy weirdness of that dress– I lay on the nice, soft, comfy bed, and reached for my apocalypse bag. Unzipping one of the pockets and pulling out my phone with two fingers, I powered it on and waited for the homescreen to pop up, grinning ruefully as I saw my background.

It was a picture of me, Romano, and Prussia all standing in front of the London hospital I had recuperated in a few weeks ago. Prussia was grinning like an idiot and dunking my head down with one hand, while Romano had his mouth open mid-shout, both of his elbows embedded in our sides. I remembered Italy taking that picture, catching both me and Romano by surprise –thus the brunet's angry shouting and vicious elbow tactics to make us back out of the picture, so he wouldn't be caught with actual _friends_. Even though I had a bunch of photos of them (and others), this was the only one I had that had all of us in the same picture, and thus, it was deserving of phone-lockscreen glory, the technological equivalent of pasting the photo on my fridge.

Fangirls would kill for half of the stuff on my phone's camera roll, now that I came to think of it.

But anyway, as I lay stomach-down on the bed in the manner of texting teens everywhere, I wondered whether or not Britain would even be awake. I mean, it was pretty late at night, and presumably we were both in the same timezone, although in different dimensions.

_Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained._

My fingers moved over the keys as I shrugged to myself, my eyelids reminding me insistently that it was really, really late at night and I'd had a rather long, frustrating day.

> Right, so apparently I'm in yet another anime world. It's called "Black Butler", and it's full of demons and Grim Reapers and angels and who the hell knows what else, so there probably won't be a shortage of magic books. Luckily the plot isn't anything too complicated and I remember it fairly well, not to mention the fact that (as far as I know) the Black Butler fandom doesn't have any psychotic fandom theories.

I paused, wondering whether or not to inform Britain of how potentially dangerous this world was anyway, then silently shook my head. Nah, I know what I'm doing. He'll just worry. 

I continued typing.

> -If you could send me a picture or something of the pentacle you guys used to send me here, it'd be really helpful. All the books on magic (or what I think are on magic, hard to tell when you can't read 'em) that I've found so far are in Latin, Greek, or some other stupid language that I don't know. Not that I'd normally be so eager to pass up an opportunity to learn a new language, but right now its December and I've been missing from my house since like, July. My parents are gonna kill me when I get home, if they haven't freaked out and moved to Kentucky or something. Which reminds me, since there aren't any outlets in 1888, how do I charge my phone?

To my surprise –and relief– the answer came almost immediately. Britain must have been watching anxiously for my contact, which was only fair, what with the inter-world travel and whatnot. I could be dead for all he knew.

  
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northe  


> Sending you a picture of the sigil we used would be absolutely useless: it failed once, and using it again might tangle your problem even further. I do suggest reading up on the books that you do find –and yes, learning Latin or Greek would be useful. I had enough books in my home that I could pick and choose, and give you the proper volumes in English: however, I've had over 900 years to collect those books. I would wager that very few magicians in whatever world you have fallen into had the time and resources to gather such a library like Romania, Norway, and myself did. You'll have to work hard at this.

I groaned to myself quietly. I had no huge problem with hard work –I came from a farm, after all– but _magical_ hard work was another matter entirely.

 _Migraines, here I come._ I thought wearily, before continuing to read.

> The basic formula is fairly simple, so you should have no problem memorizing it. Your intent is to transport yourself and your effects (sui, specifica, proprius, if you remember) to your own dimension proper. The transportation in and of itself is not terribly complicated, it's the destination which will give you problems. You will need an absolutely unholy amount of qualifiers, as well as an enormous amount of magical power and amplification seals. Collect as many "qualify" marks for that world as you can, put them in the "reicio" portion of the pentacle so that you don't end up in our world or a different part of that world. You should write your findings down in that journal you were always scribbling in, if you still have it. I'll send you pictures of the qualifiers we used to negate our world and the world the Second Players came from, as well as the qualifier for the world we sent them too, so you don't end up right where you started –or worse. And about your phone: I did not provide for any kind of charging, since I assumed you would have it available upon your arrival, so it would be best to keep it turned off and conserve power. You should do your best to accomplish things on your own, and call me only if it is an extreme and urgent emergency. But you should do fine. After all, you seem to thrive on that sort of thing.

  
Rye-Rye  


> Right dude, sure thing.

I remembered enough about my lessons to know that ignoring Britain's advice would be extraordinarily risky. The dude had a pretty good head for strategy and he'd had god-knows-how-long to study and perfect his magical skill: any suggestions he provided (unless he was angry) were very good ones. I quickly powered my phone down after my reply, before tucking it back in my bag and blowing out the candle on my nightstand.

I yawned once, stretching vigorously, before wriggling under the covers and promptly falling asleep.

_***Time Skip***_

Morning brought the arrival of bright light streaming through the heavy curtains, the sun reflecting off the snow and slicing into my Victorian room in the form of a rectangular beam of sunlight falling across the bed and stabbing right into my eyes as soon as I hesitantly cracked them open. I promptly rolled off of the bed with a shriek that, had I been coherent, would have probably been something resembling _"MY EYES!"_

I groaned as I lay on the floor, fully awake, if only because my head hit the wooden floorboards rather painfully and it was hard not to be awake when you were half hanging out of what was once a very warm, snuggly bed, but was now a choking deathtrap for your legs.

"I hate the damn winter sun…" I muttered under my breath, rubbing at my eyes with the back of my wrist as I waited for the spots to fade out of them. _Stupid winter weather. Stupid sunlight refraction. Stupid scientific laws of nature._

For those who haven't noticed, I was not a morning person when woken up unexpectedly.

However, an unpleasant awakening wasn't going to stop me from going about my day. I quickly kicked the sheets the remaining way off my legs, letting out a small grunt of pain as I flexed my left shoulder. The scar there, a remainder of a knife wound, twinged unpleasantly as I moved, a reminder that I had landed on it rather hard.

I had similar whitened, old scars scattered across my body: an awkwardly placed one that curved from just beneath my left shoulderblade to just an inch past my spine, resultant of shrapnel from a rather impressive car crash, a smaller, older one on my right hip that had come from a throwing knife, and the most recent, a still-pink scar that cut across the front of my throat, which had come from an unsuccessful throat cut. I was fairly certain either Ciel or Sebastian –definitely the later– had noticed my bandage-wrapped fingers, which were there to help protect the healing nail beds.

All of these wounds had been caused by the Second Players I had pissed off, so to be honest, I wasn't overeager to start another fight.

I quickly set my back and feet against the wooden floorboards and began my daily sit-ups, trying to sort out my thoughts as I did. Ciel and Sebastian, if they accepted my cover story, would allow me to stay at the Phantomhive's residence, where I didn't doubt I would soon be put to use as Ciel's pet magician. Depending on the antagonist (and whether or not this was the anime or manga) I was gonna have to learn a lot of magic, fast. I supposed that if Ciel was going to take me on, he'd be expecting me to be useful, and who better to find magic books than the demonic butler who could get a list of all doctors in London, interrogate them, and return to a townhouse in time to make tea? I had this whole magic-sigil-gathering thing in the bag.

Sit-ups complete, I moved on to stomach crunches.

Fitting in among the Victorians would also be a bit of a trick, so I supposed I could keep relying on Mey-rin to teach me things, since _every other character_ was a male. Except Lizzy, of course, but I almost certainly wouldn't have reliable access to her, so, the maid it would have to be.

I spared a moment to wish for a track field or a set of weights like there were at Germany's house, but no use crying over spilled milk. I'm sure there had to be some kind of Victorian equivalent, I could ask Bardroy or Finnian. The servants seemed to be a lot nicer than their presumptive master, not to mention the scary-as-hell (hehe, pun) butler.

I finished my morning exercises and brushed my hair and teeth, threw on the extraordinarily complicated dress, strapped my watch to my wrist and shoved my pocketknife in the dress's pocket, and was out to face the day. After a bit of wandering around the rather lavish townhouse, I finally found what seemed to be the drawing room, where Lau was reading the morning paper and Ciel was dealing with his mail.

I glanced over Lau's shoulder to see him reading about the attacks on coffeehouses typical to the Curry Arc. "Let's be frank, that duo has seemed terribly dodgy from the start." Lau said, probably commenting on Soma and Agni. He noticed Ciel's large pile of letters.

"Why Lord Earl! What a popular little thing you are!" he added, then noticed me sneaking into the room.

"Hello little magician!" the older male greeted happily, and I sweatdropped, waving awkwardly to him. I'd hoped to avoid Ciel's scrutiny, but it appeared that, after a quick glance upward, he didn't really care.

"Can I have the paper when you're done?" I asked Lau sheepishly, and he beamed, nodding happily.

"Here! I was done with it anyways." he said cheerfully, handing it off to me as I opened it with a snap.

"He's actually right though, what's with all the letters? Aren't you busy?" I asked over the paper as I noticed Ciel slit one of the envelopes open with his letter opener.

"Quite. Every time I come to London, I can't go a day without one of these." he growled irritably, then answered Lau's first comment as I hunched into my cushy armchair and tried to be unnoticeable. It was apparent that by now, while Ciel didn't trust me as far as he could throw me, he did trust my somewhat obvious fear of Sebastian to keep me in line and make sure I didn't blab any of his secrets.

"However, I can't fathom why _they_ would cause those incidents." Ciel added grumpily, meaning Soma and Agni, no doubt. "Going by that behavior, the theory of a grudge against colonial rule seems weak at best. Even if they think ill of Anglo-Indians, attacking them indiscriminately entails too much risk. In the first place, if they were indeed the perpetuators, would they leave the townhouse in blatant view of my sight as they did? That's like practically begging me to suspect them!" he snorted irritably. "Just thinking back on it makes me angry! Besides-"

Lau cut him off with an oblivious little smile "Well then! To expediate matters, you just have to trail them at night. Right?" he asked happily, and I shyly peeked over the edge of the newspaper again.

"Um, what's all this about?" I asked with deliberate naïveté, and Ciel switched his icy look to me, remaining silent for several seconds.

"Sebastian confirmed your story, so I suppose you can continue boarding at my home." he finally said. "We will continue with the story Sebastian constructed, and Lau, if you don't stick to that-"

Ciel's threat was cut off by Lau smiling angelically. "Why, my little lord, whyever would you suspect me of such a thing?" he asked sweetly, and I could _feel_ the disbelief Ciel aimed at the Chinaman.

"Anyway, you're be accompanying us. Might be useful to have a magician under my employment." he said absently as he looked down at his desk and ripped open another letter, and I made a mental note to learn Latin as fast as humanly possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 10.13 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: December 8th, 2015, 9.25 PM USA Central Time


	8. That Butler, Sizing Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, because eventually I will need to explain this fully –the magic Arya was taught and usually uses is roughly explained thus: pentacles are used to summon large amounts of power, and the words, runes, and signs inscribed within the pentacle are used to channel it towards a specific purpose. Verbal magic chants are also used to help direct the flow of power, ending in whichever result the spell is geared towards. Most spell-users improve with age and experience; innate personal power and control will grow with practice, thus older and more powerful magicians (i.e. England, Romania, Norway, and Oliver, the magicians Arya will typically reference) can use magic without a physical pentacle, memorizing and calling to mind the image of the appropriate diagram, using it and the spell's chant to bring about their desired result. Younger, less experienced magicians (i.e. Arya) rely on actually drawing most of their pentacles and spells, however they have memorized one or two less complicated and, invariably, less powerful diagrams. Magicians rely heavily on writing down as many of their incantations and diagrams as possible, so they often have a self-made book on hand that holds their most useful spells. (Arya uses her journal for this purpose.) Repercussions of failed incantations vary depending on the spell and the mistake; fatalities only occur when a magician is messing with a dangerous magical entity or an extraordinarily advanced spell, in which case, they probably deserved it. Mistakes for more minor spells usually result in large or small explosions, backward or mishmashed results, or simple no results at all. The type of magic that is used in the Black Butler universe (and this is not canon by the way) is the incredibly, utterly, mathematically precise kind, the kind where if you pronounce so much as a single syllable of a single word wrong, or leave a microscopic hole in a circle, you're dead meat, even if you're just lighting a candle.

_Arya's POV:_

I blinked as I saw Sebastian waiting for me after I had left Ciel and Lau to plot and plan like the pair of sneaky people they were. He had an icily polite smile, and bowed to me slightly as I approached. I slowed down, swallowing nervously.

"Um…did you need something, Mister Sebastian?" I asked hesitantly, and he answered without wavering from his polite smile and posture.

"As women of your age are unused to wearing the garments of this age, I have sent for a tailor. Your fittings are due today, and if you would allow me, I shall take you to the drawing room where she awaits." he said, every inch of him an English butler, and I gave him a tiny, un-fooled smile, following close behind as he started leading me down another oak-paneled hallway.

"Look, Mister Sebastian, I know about your…um, species." I said awkwardly after a few seconds of stifling silence. He said nothing and didn't turn around, but I could feel his attention as I hastily continued. "I've never summoned a demon –or done anything else demon-related– in my entire life and I _certainly_ don't intend to change that. I'm pretty sure my teacher hasn't either, but then again, I wouldn't know. I don't want to get in you or the Earl Phantomhive's way, so…"

I trailed off as Sebastian finally came to a halt and turned around, still wearing that pleasant half-smile that was just about as sincere as Ciel's hatred of candy. (If the ladies and the gentlemen of the court would remember, Ciel loved sweets.)

"Most magicians I have seen rely on complex magical rituals, relying on proper intonations, signs, and spellcraft. I have yet to see a single one perform "magic" that is not fueled by another's power." he said clinically, and I gulped as I saw a brief red flicker in his eyes. "That power usually comes from us." he added with a faint, equally insincere smile, and my eyebrows furrowed slightly.

That was vastly different from the magic Britain had taught me, which was the usage of magical signs (always involving a pentacle) and the application of the power gained thereof. Ritual, while important, played a fairly minimal part; if you pronounced something wrong, unless you made a terrible mess of it (like saying "kitty" for "pretty" or something like that), there wasn't any kind of problem. If you drew a line wrong, the magic just simply wouldn't work, or it would backfire in a proportionally large/small explosion.

The magic Sebastian was talking about seemed to be the incredibly dangerous, imprecise form talked about in some of the fantasy books I'd read, where if you so much as left a single microscopic hole in the design you were going to get eaten by Cthulhu (or something even nastier).

"Well, I dunno about my teacher using it, since he is so old he might've at one point, but he certainly never _taught_ me that kind of magic." I replied after a few seconds. "Seriously though. If I'm going to be living in this house for the foreseeable future, I'd really be happy if I could walk around without jumping at your shadow every three seconds. I'd like to avoid any hostilities if at all possible. Truce?" I said, holding my hand out in front of me.

Sebastian raised one perfectly black eyebrow, staring at me for several uncomfortable seconds. I squirmed a little under his scrutiny, but kept my hand out, and he eventually gave the first genuine (and therefore extraordinarily tiny) smile I had seen on him yet, and extended his own hand, crushing mine in a firm handshake.

"Very well. You can relax, I won't murder you in your sleep." he said, his eyes glossing over red for a split second as his tiny smile grew into a slightly-less-tiny sadistic grin. "However, since you _are_ a magician, I hope you don't expect to be treated with kid gloves." he added ominously, and I smiled nervously.

"Right…ehehe…"

Sebastian finally let go of my hand –which was numb– and turned, pushing open yet another set of doors as I made a face behind him.

 _If I'm not careful, I'll get lost in this huge firetrap of a townhouse._ I thought cynically, before Sebastian beckoned me in. I blinked as I recognized the tailor who, as far as I knew, had appeared a few times in the manga but never in the anime, feeling an acute sense of relief wash over me.

 _Well, whatever happens, at least I won't be dealing with the psychotic angel duo...probably._ I thought with a hopefully imperceptible sigh, watching the woman glare at Sebastian, mumbling something about "hardhead". She had light brown eyes, much like my own, with brown hair pinned at the side of her head in a sort of curlicue, and was dressed in a low-cut white shirt with a brown vest over it, as well as a matching brown skirt that came down to her ankles.

"This is Miss Aryana Thompson, from America. She has lost all her clothing in the transit over the ocean, and as American fashions are vastly different from our own, you will need to teach her how to wear her new garments. Miss Thompson, this is Miss Nina Hopkins, the tailor for the house of Phantomhive. " Sebastian said briskly, and I gave her an awkward wave.

"Nice to meet ya." I said, and her eyes suddenly blazed.

"Finally! A woman in the world of business!" she squealed, snatching me out from behind Sebastian and spinning me around in a circle. The demonic butler watched the proceedings with a faint smile, before bowing himself out. I had forgotten how very _liberal_ Miss Nina was in the manga, but it would be a welcome change.

She finally let go of me as I wobbled to a halt, and Miss Nina calmed down, squinting at my outfit as she pulled various materials from her bag. "Did you borrow that from the maid?" she asked curiously as she intentionally pricked her finger on the head of her needle, making sure it was sharp. I blinked.

"Uh, yeah." I said as she motioned me towards a stand.

"I thought so: I made that uniform. What were you wearing before?" Miss Nina asked as she made me get up on it, and I paused.

"Um, a shirt and pa –er, trousers." I hastily amended, wondering absently whether or not the word "pants" had been invented in 1888, and having the vague notion "pants" also meant "underpants" in British English.

 _Huh. You know, maybe I should research this sort of thing when I get home. Be cool to know._ I thought meditatively, but was jolted out of my thought process by Nina's eyes flashing dangerously again.

"A woman after my own heart!" she shrieked in excitement, before yanking her tape measure taunt like someone brandishing a nunchuck. "Right, so get out of that dress so I can take your measurements." she said happily, and I scratched the back of my head uncertainly.

"Um, that's just the thing…I'm not quite sure how." I told her, sweatdropping, and her smile became slightly less maniac.

"Well, why don't I show you how! Its easy." she said confidently, then grabbed a button and unsnapped it.

I was eternally grateful for Miss Nina's commentary on Victorian (phrased as English, but what was a little white lie amongst friends) clothing options, showing me how to undo and redo the clothing that I would be wearing. Once that was over with, I stood self-consciously on the pedestal, wearing nothing but my undergarments, as Miss Nina measured me.

"You're quite tall. Are all Americans your size?" she asked curiously as she stretched the tape measure from my waist to the nape of my neck, and I resisted the urge to shrug.

"Um, I dunno. Maybe?" I guessed, never having been curious about that particular bit of my national identity.

"Any preferred colors or styles?" she asked as she made me hold my arm out and measured it from shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist, and wrist to shoulder. I thought about it for several seconds.

"Um, well, I'm gonna be doing a lot of-" Insert job that involved a lot of drawing supplies. "-accounting n' stuff, so something that can stand a little wear and ink? I'm sure you can tell I'd be better with something as simple as possible." I said hesitantly. I didn't want to get any of my clothes unsalvageable-ly dirty when I was performing magic.

 _"Tres bien!_ Anything for a more formal occasion, seeing as you'll most likely be accompanying the Earl to any company parties?" she asked enthusiastically, and I bit my lip as she began measuring my legs.

"Um, I have an Oriental dress already, but it has slits in the sides and shows my legs." I told her uncertainly, and she "hmmed" absently.

"I'll whip something up for the more stiff-necked parties, but that will do nicely if you're not so concerned." she said decisively, and I shrugged, which was now safe to do since she was wrapping the tape measure around my waist.

"Whatever. You are the tailor." I said complacently as she made me hold out my other arm, then remembered something as she began to measure the circumference of my wrists and elbow. "Um, can I also get a long, erm, ankle-length hooded cloak, black?" I asked her awkwardly, and she looked up from my shoulder.

"Of course! Why do you need it?" she asked with a flourish as she whipped the tape measure away from me and began jotting down my measurements on several pieces of paper. I didn't even blink.

"Long story." I said with faux-weariness, since there really wasn't a good way to say _"I need it to use magic and/or magical summoning purposes."_

Miss Nina shrugged cheerily as she continued writing on her paper. "Well, it should be relatively easy to make regardless. I must say, you have quite the muscular shoulder-silhouette for a woman, even a working one." she added as she began pulling out pieces of paper and a set of pens. I shrugged as I quickly wriggled back into my dress.

"I was born on a farm, and I've been working with people in the military for a few months now. I've bulked out." I said honestly, snapping the last button as I watched her pen scratch rapidly across the papers, the light of inspiration gleaming in her eyes.

"A tasteful red dress in Imperial silk for formal…gold-cream ribbon and tassel trimming for elegance…a light green cotton, trimmed in yellow, for casual business…a dark sapphire velvet, with a raised collar, for more serious matters…warm brown linen for horseback-"

"Um, Miss Nina?"

She paused in her frantic scribbling. "Yes?" she asked impatiently, and I rubbed the back of my neck.

"Horseback riding? I don't-"

She waved me off as she continued scribbling frantically. "You are the head of an important business branch. You'll need to have the same skill set and wardrobe as your noble sponsor, to impress any visitors. _Oui?"_ she asked as she crosshatched something on one of the drawings, then raised a hand and made a dismissive shooing motion. "You can run along now, I'll sew and tack these up before sundown." she told me, and I shrugged and hopped off the stand.

"Right. Bye, Miss Nina!" I called as I stepped out the door, and she murmured something in agreement, still intently focused on her work. I felt my stomach rumble hungrily and remembered that I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and quickly ran over my memory of the townhouse, heading towards where I thought the kitchen should be.

The smell of something cooking –hopefully something edible– began to become more and more apparent, confirming my guess, and I sped up slightly. Eventually, I came to an unassuming-looking door in an equally spartan hallway –probably because guests and important people weren't supposed to be wandering down in this direction– and pushed it open, spotting Mey-rin as she leaped up from her spot sharing a cup of tea with the three other servants.

"Miss Arya, you shouldn't be down here! This place is for the servants, yes it is!" she squeaked, clearly embarrassed for me, and I smiled and rubbed the back of my neck.

"I still ain't used to being treated so nicely, being head of the branch and whatnot. I got hungry and I was wondering if there was anything down here." I said brightly, and I saw Bardroy, who was slouched in a corner and glaring impotently at the busily cooking Sebastian, who was doing something with some pots and pans, look up and crack a grin.

"It's nice to see another American 'round here. The name's Bardroy, I'm the cook." he said in a friendly fashion, saluting me with two fingers. I saluted him back the way Germany had taught me, and we grinned at each other for a few seconds before I was distracted by Mey-rin busily brushing off my borrowed dress.

"You're very important, miss, and it's not for you to be down here." she scolded, and I gingerly grabbed her wrists and pulled her away.

"Seriously, its fine. I'm not _that_ important." I told her, and she gave me an uncertain look over her thick glasses, then a tentative smile. There was a metallic-sounding clatter from Sebastian's area.

"The American branch of Funtom's is still rather small, so Miss Thompson is only slightly your superior." he commented smoothly, and Mey-rin's smile became slightly more genuine.

"Well, its nice to have you in London then, yes it is. How long are you staying?" she asked cheerfully, and I flicked my eyes towards Sebastian's back, then returned my gaze to her.

"As long as business dictates." I said, with a shrug, hoping that that was an acceptable time period for Ciel. Mey-rin smiled, accepting the excuse, and then blinked, quickly bustling over to one of the counters and pulling out a loaf of bread. She methodically chopped it up as I stared, nonplussed, and then bent down and took out a jar of something.

"Well, we can't have you fainting from hunger, but it's almost dinner time. A sandwich should do, yes it should."

Bardroy had sensed the possibility of cooking uninterrupted by Sebastian, and edged over, a slightly manic gleam in his eyes. I surreptitiously edged the bread away, remembering that his cooking methods usually involved high explosives, and I _was_ kinda hungry.

"So, where are ya from?" Bardroy asked, lighting up a cigarette in a semi-disappointed manner as I edged the plate away from him, then hurriedly stopped Mey-rin from adding what looked like plaster to my sandwich.

"Virginia. Um, maybe this would work?" I tried, holding up a jar of mayonnaise as she fiddled with her glasses, peered at it, then laughed sheepishly and took it from me.

"Sorry, but my sight isn't all the best, yes it is." she told me as she continuing preparing the sandwich, and I could practically _feel_ Sebastian's contempt radiating from across the kitchen.

I had to stop several more inedible disasters before I could finally grab and chow down on my sandwich, sighing happily as my stomach stopped growling with hunger. Sebastian was still preparing what I assumed to be dinner, and Bardroy had started eyeing the butler contemplatively again, as if he was debating whether or not to try and assist him in dinner preparations. Mey-rin had gotten out the silverware and was polishing it busily, and I eyed the knives (and forks) absently, never having seen a genuine set of actual _silver_ silverware.

Then I remembered what Sebastian occasionally used them for, and took a mental note to start using chopsticks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 10.20 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: December 26th, 2015, 9.22 PM USA Central Time


	9. That Butler, Snowy Sneakin'

_Arya POV:_

I watched Soma wave to Ciel from my spot by the fireplace, having been updating my journal to the best of my abilities. "Well, we're heading out. Hurry to bed, little runt Ciel!" he called cheerfully as Agni placed his hands together and bowed from the doorway, before both of them turned and left.

Ciel irritably tossed his newspaper down and glared at me and Lau, who was doing something with his pipe and a knife. "You two are coming with us. You might be useful." he growled, and I quickly followed after him and Lau as they headed for the front door, extraditing that we were tailing the Hindustani duo for information. I grabbed my Russian coat from Sebastian and shrugged it on, shoving my journal in the extra-large pocket it had in the lining. I'd written down the few spells I could perform in there, since I had only ever managed to memorize a spell that cast a wall in front of a person or object, and that could be shattered by a stronger magician or even enough impact force.

I shivered and wished I had mittens as we slunk out into the London night, although my winter coat was still warm and toasty. The snow had stopped falling and the night was clear and cold, our feet crunching softly on the snow as Sebastian took the lead with Ciel, Lau, and me following behind. We snuck after Soma and Agni as the latter ushered his charge into a bar, and we peeked through the windows as they showed the ridiculous drawing to various attendees and drunkards, always getting a negative shake of the head or a puzzled, fuzzy (usually because they were hammered) look.

"By all appearances, they really are just trying to find someone, hmm?" Lau asked as we peeked around a corner, and Ciel blew on his hands –safely mittened– to warm them.

"Brr, its cold." he muttered as he rubbed his hands rapidly together, then looked up at Soma and Agni as they entered another bar. "In order to obtain information about someone in England, the first stop should always be the local pubs and clubs. They aren't doing anything out of the ordinary."

I filed that information away for later usage. "If he actually expects to find anything with that so-called "drawing", he's dumber than he looks." I said under my breath, and I heard Lau snort quietly from behind me. Ciel shushed us both, and we all ducked back behind the building as Agni and Soma walked out of the pub.

This slow game of cat-and-mouse continued as I began to resort to pinching myself to stay awake, the city clocks ringing eleven o'clock, and then midnight. We watched Soma stomp down the street, fuming, as Agni glided behind, before they rounded the corner and Sebastian flicked out his pocketwatch.

"1 A.M. They will be returning to the house shortly." he commented as I yawned and the bells began to toll again. "Let us head back as well." the butler added, then whistled sharply as I jumped, seeing a large carriage rattling towards us. Sebastian handed Ciel in and left me and Lau to ourselves, muttering something to the driver as I heard a jingle of coins, before he joined us in what I realized was simply an old-fashioned cab. It began to rattle back in the direction of the townhouse as I slumped against the side of the carriage and tried to get some shut-eye.

__

_***Time Skip***_

I groaned and sipped the tea _someone_ had prepared –when I was awake at night and not running on adrenaline, my consciousness regressed back to the Stone Age– as I stared blankly out the window. It was roughly 2 in the morning and it had begun to snow again, which was very nice and picturesque, but I was running on autopilot and waiting impatiently (and sleepily) for the rest of the plot to progress.

 _Stupid midnight calls._ I thought as I knocked the rest of the tea back and set the saucer down on the oak table, staring grumpily at the half opened windows. _Stupid winter. Stupid snow. Stupid cold. Stupid-_

"Young master."

"EEK!"

I tripped and fell backwards, staring at the window as Sebastian raised on eyebrow at me from his upside-down position in the eaves. I took several deep breathes, trying to calm my racing pulse as I pressed my folded hands against the bridge of my nose.

 _Forgot about that bit._ I thought shakily as I began to calculate how many years that surprise appearance knocked off of my lifespan and Lau moved away from his position by the bookcase. Sebastian's eyes moved to Ciel.

"Young master, he is on the move." he repeated to the earl, who yawned and got up from the couch.

"So sleepy…" he murmured, then shook himself and straightened his suit. "All right-"

"Wait!"

We all turned to see Soma standing in the doorway to the drawing room. "You!" Ciel snapped in surprise, and I quickly got up from the floor and dusted off my borrowed dress.

"Take me with you as well." Soma demanded, folding his arms. "I was aware that Agni would sometimes go out after I'd gone to bed. I want to know…what he's up to." he said, and Ciel and Sebastian glanced at each other.

I grabbed a handful of snow from the window ledge and pressed it against the back of my neck to wake myself up, shivering and straightening up at the intense cold. I then tossed the slowly melting ball of snow back outside and grabbed my winter coat, shrugging it back on and following behind the others as they headed for the exit.

__

_***Time Skip***_

We all snuck around the corner as Agni entered the gates of a large mansion.

"He went into this building." Lau commented as he looked up at the large house.

Ciel started. "If memory serves, this is…" he muttered, before trailing off and smacking his mittened hand over his face. "I see. Now I'm starting to get the picture." he said in exasperation, and Soma glanced at him.

"What do you mean? Whose house is this?" he asked demandingly, and Lau clapped him on the shoulder.

"Now, now, Your Highness, patience, patience." he said as he slipped into his ominous persona again, waggling his fingers spookily. "It will be clear once you've gone inside. And then you will be forced to face the truth, whether you like it or not. You…" He placed a hand on his chest. "…and I both, 'kay?" he asked as he smiled cheerily, and Ciel deadpanned from beside me.

"By the _'And I'_ , I take it you haven't a clue either?" he grumped, and Lau beamed.

"Yes! Who lives here?" he asked obliviously, and I smacked my forehead from behind him.

"This residence belongs to Harold West Jeb, who runs an extensive import business. I had the distinct displeasure of meeting him once…He's an unsavory sort who loves all kind of titles." Ciel said dispassionately, and I scowled.

"A social climber, huh?" I muttered in disgust, then jumped as Soma leaned over my shoulder. I hadn't thought I'd said it loud enough for anyone to hear me.

"A social climber? What is that?" he asked curiously, and I rubbed my hands together as I blew on them, trying to warm my fingers up.

"Somebody of moderate or low birth who is disgustingly obsessed with trying to buy, scheme, or marry their way into the highest societal class possible." I explained absently. I'd only heard about them in period Victorian novels, but it stood to reason that they'd exist in real life too. From what I remembered of West's character, he was a textbook example. "So this guy ships stuff?" I asked Ciel, trying to get us back on track.

"Imports, hmm? We're in the same business, then." Lau commented, and Soma rubbed his chin.

"Why would Agni go to an importer's house?" he asked meditatively, and Ciel made a face.

"He mainly imports spice and tea leaves from India, and runs "Harold Trading", a general store, and the "Harold West", a Hindustani coffeehouse." he said dismissively, and Sebastian "hmm"ed thoughtfully.

"While investigating Miss Mina, I happened across Mister West's name in some of the documents I was reviewing. Per those papers, Bengal is indeed the main source of his wares, and he has suffered collateral damage from the hanging incidents, but…it seems the company representative himself, Mister West, _just happened_ to be away at the time of the incidents and escaped being hung." he said significantly, and Ciel sighed.

"There's nothing for it…let's go take a look." he said grudgingly, and Sebastian turned around.

"As you wish, sir."

He grabbed Ciel around the waist and suddenly launched over the wall, and I grinned as I heard Ciel's muffled shriek of "YOU IDIOT!" on the other side of the wall. Lau turned to me with a helpful smile, and I gave him a grateful nod as I stepped into the cup his interlocked hands made and let him boost me up.

I gripped the wall with my knees and turned to grab Soma's hand, pulling him up beside me as Lau expertly hopped up onto the wall next to Soma like the stupid martial-arts knowing jerk he was.

I gulped as I saw several growling, fierce-looking guard dogs slink across the snow in front of Ciel and Sebastian, and Soma jerked from beside me.

"CIEL!" he called before I could stop him, but suddenly the dogs whimpered and began to back away from the duo, tails between their legs. I shivered as the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and not because of the cold.

"Oh? The hounds are falling back?" Soma murmured in shock from beside me, and I swallowed again.

_Though I suppose the dogs are right to be scared of a demon, I'm just glad he's on our –well, Ciel's– side._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 10.25 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: December 29th, 2015, 10.18 PM USA Central Time


	10. That Butler, Social Climber

_Arya's POV:_

I grunted as I grabbed Soma's arm and helped him scrabble the rest of the way over the edge of the wall, before we both jumped down next to Ciel and Sebastian.

"Hohhh there, Earl!" Lau called from the front door, and Soma and Ciel shivered as they saw the two men sprawled across the doorstep with elongated needles jabbed into their necks. Lau was smiling cheerfully as he twirled a ring of keys around yet another long needle. "Over here, over here!" he said happily, and Soma "eep"ed.

Ciel stared at the Chinaman blankly. "You…" he began in disgust, and Lau grinned as he waved a finger at the earl.

"Nooo, what do you take me for? I didn't kill them. I simply put them to sleep! I think it's a four-thousand-year-old method from Ancient China." he admitted, and Ciel sighed.

"Nevermind. Let's stop dallying and find him already." he said impatiently, and I nudged one of the guards with my toe as we passed by. He didn't move.

"Dude, can you teach me that?" I asked Lau softly, and he beamed with the innocence of a mildly murderous child.

"Not unless you know acupuncture."

 _Damnit._

"There do not seem to be any guards inside." Sebastian murmured as we entered the foyer, looking towards the stairs. "I can hear voices coming from the second floor. What say we go upstairs and have a look?" he asked, and Ciel nodded.

We all snuck up the large, elegant staircase, with Sebastian taking point and Ciel and Lau walking behind him, Soma and myself bringing up the rear. Every candle and lamp in the house was unlit, which made the rectangular square of light beaming from a largely appointed doorway all the more obvious. We all crowded around that half-opened door, listening in.

"You've done a splendid job. Don't look so tormented, old chap." a smarmy voice said from inside. "Why not have a cigar and relax?"

We all peered inside, seeing a man with dirty blonde hair combed and gelled back over his head and dressed in a snappy suit –Harold West– offer a cigar to Agni, who was sitting stiffly on the couch across from him.

"This is a first-class Havana cigar I bought from James Fox, the Royal Warrant holder." he said proudly, but Agni remained silent. West withdrew the cigar and smirked. "Well, in any case, the plan has been executed to perfection so far. Everything will be resolved in a week's time." he continued, grabbing Agni's wrist and revealing his bandaged right hand. I subconsciously smoothed my fingers over the thin cotton wrappings on my own fingers. "As long as I have this "Right Hand of God", my scheme will be realized!"

We all ducked behind the edge of the door as West's eyes traveled the room. "Three long years I've waited. I'll see myself victorious in this, no matter what!" he declared, and we peeked back around the corner as Agni shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

"If I can carry out my mission as promised, Mina wi-" he began, and I belatedly remembered what happened in this scene and tried to grab the Indian prince, but I was too late.

"MINA!" Soma yelled as he burst into the room, making Agni and West start.

"You bloody f–!" Ciel started, his voice suddenly muffled by Sebastian clapping a hand over his mouth.

"He knows the young master and I. Let us see how things proceed before rushing in." the butler murmured, and I winced as Soma grabbed Agni by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet. Soma might've been a bit of an idiot throughout the series, but at least he was a well-meaning idiot.

"M-my prince-!" Agni stuttered, but Soma was in no mood to be pacified.

"What is the meaning of this, Agni!? Have you known where Mina is all along?!" he yelled, shaking his vassal as hard as he could. Given as he wasn't a particularly strong person, it wasn't very hard, but the anger was certainly there. West's slimy smile twitched slightly.

"Ahh, so that's your master, Agni?" he asked in amusement, and Soma whirled around.

"You…you're the swine that took Mina away!" he said angrily, then pointed to the businessman. "Agni! Knock him down!" he commanded as West leaned arrogantly against the couch.

Soma hesitated, turning around, as Agni merely stood and shook in place, his eyes fixed on the ground. "Agni! What are you doing?!" Soma demanded, and West snorted contemptuously.

"Agni. Throw His annoying Highness out of here." he said as he snapped his fingers at Soma, who reeled backwards as if physically struck.

"Wha-?!" he stammered, as Agni shook harder.

"It seems a quarrel has ensued." Sebastian commented as he peered around the doorframe, and Lau cradled his face in his hands, humming quietly but cheerfully.

"Though there's no mistaking West's involvement with the hangings based on their little chat…they no longer seem to be Incidents of the Underworld." Ciel sighed to himself, and Lau leaned closer to Ciel, putting his hand by his mouth to help his whisper carry further.

"And that means this is all outside the earl's jurisdiction. As it has to do with polite society and all." he whispered back, and Ciel scowled.

"Indeed…" he agreed, and Lau pouted.

"But informing the Yard is a pain, so what do you say we beat them silly and go home?" he asked cheerfully, and Ciel clicked his tongue.

"That doesn't sound half bad, but I have another idea. Let's leave West at large for a while longer. Tonight, we'll be leaving here with that thick-headed prince." he said firmly.

Lau cocked his head. "But West knows what you two look like, right?" he whispered, and Ciel scowled to himself.

"That he does." he admitted, then looked at me grudgingly. "You're a magician: do you have anything that might help?" he asked reluctantly, and I pulled my journal out from my pocket and opened it from the back, starting to page through the section I had written my magic formulas in.

"I can cast a transparent but human-impenetrable wall, transport inanimate items from one spot to another, and lift very small objects for about three seconds." I whispered sheepishly, and Ciel frowned.

"That's not helpful." he hissed back, and I shrugged helplessly. I'd written down what I'd written down –it wasn't my fault most of what England taught me was theory and mechanics.

Sebastian waved us both down with a subtle smile. "Please let me handle it." he said confidently, and I watched as he walked over to the mounted deer's head on the wall.

Rolling my eyes, I peeked back around the doorframe as the argument in the drawing room began to reach its climax. Agni raised his bandaged hand to smack Soma, and I jumped as I felt something _whoosh_ past me and Ciel.

Sebastian blocked Agni's blow, Soma staggering away from the masked butler. Sebastian turned, revealing the deer's head he had used as a mask.

"Wh-wh-who the hell is thiiiiiis?!" West shouted in surprise, and Sebastian turned to face him as he "eep"ed and jumped away.

"I, naught but a humble deer, have come for this prince." Sebastian said with a deep bow, and I smacked my forehead as Lau looked up at the place where the deer's head had formerly been nailed.

"Putting on that mounted deer's head and going in was a stroke of brilliance, Master Butler!" he said happily, and Ciel sweatdropped.

"He did hide his face, but… _are we talking about the same idea here?"_ he said in exasperation, and I shushed him as West pointed a trembling finger at Sebastian.

"Fo-forget the prince, this might be one of the enemy's spies! Agni!" he shouted.

"Nothing of the sort. I am merely a humble deer-" Sebastian tried, but West cut him off.

"Kill him!" he ordered, and Agni whipped around.

"Kill–! I cannot do such a-" he said in shock, but West shouted over him.

"Shut up! Do you want me to renege on that promise! I'm ordering you! DO IT!" he roared, and Agni stared helplessly at him as his fists began to shake.

"I…I…" he gasped, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. I shivered as I saw the tears turn to blood, and Agni collapsed to his knees. "My God…my master…is but one and no other…and for he alone would I use my right hand…so I had vowed." he whispered, and I gulped as I saw him grit his teeth. "Now I shall commit a sin by betraying that god…"

"Agni, no!" Soma shouted from beside Sebastian.

"PLEASE FORGIVE ME!" Agni roared, ripping the bandages apart on his hand. Sebastian quickly slung Soma over his shoulder and dodged Agni's wild blow as it smashed some kind of table in half. I grinned as West shrieked.

"Gyaah! Not the chest I bought at General Tradiiiing!" he squealed in dismay, and Sebastian dashed around the room at a speed too fast to follow and Agni followed right behind, the other items in the room being steadily demolished by missed or errant blows.

"STOOOOOP! THAT'S A ONE-OF-A-KIND GALLE LAMP FROM THOMAS GOODE! My Royal Worchester tableware! My Lock & Co. hat! My limited edition Meissen cup! My special-ordered-!"

My somewhat sadistic listening to West's cries of horror was interrupted as Lau picked Ciel up off the ground. "This is all starting to look a mite dangerous. We should take our leave now, Earl." he said as Ciel let out a yelp of surprise, then squirmed around to yell to Sebastian as we set off down the hall.

"Hey! People will start taking note of this commotion! Once you've grabbed the prince, you'd better make a run for it too."

I followed Lau as we ran through the house, avoiding several maids and manservants who tried to stop us. They almost caught up to us at one point, but I quickly chanted under my breath as a glowing yellow wall sprung into existence behind us, and grinned as I heard several cries of shock. Lau looked over his shoulder as Ciel's remaining eye grew huge.

"I say, isn't it handy to have a magician around when you're escaping from somewhere." Lau said appreciatively, and Ciel's eye narrowed.

"Take that down. We don't want to tip our hand to West." he snapped irritably, and I squeezed my eyes shut for a few seconds, feeling my fingertips tingle as the glowing wall faded out at the edge of my senses.

"There. Happy?" I asked as Lau booted the door open and we ran out into the open street.

"Blissfully." Ciel muttered, punching Lau in the back to make him drop the earl as we skidded around a corner and saw Sebastian and Soma.

_***Time Skip***_

"Amazing, wasn't he? That fellow from before." Lau commented, and I yawned hugely, sipping at the tea Sebastian had made. It was at least three or four in the morning, and I'd been awake since eight in the morning yesterday. "It was beyond anything that could be defined as human."

I nudged Soma, who was sulkily sitting in one of the other armchairs, offering him some of the tea as he shook his head and declined.

"He was in the state of Samadhi. No one can lay a hand on him when he gets like that." Soma said, looking depressed, and Ciel paused, lowering his teacup.

"Samadhi?" he asked, and Sebastian, standing behind his master, tucked the tea tray under his shoulder.

"It is to do with religion, yes? A kind of trance state. Human beings are rare creatures that can produce tremendous power derived from intense belief that gives way to a kind of blind faith." he explained. "The Norse Vikings of yore became Berserkers in the name of their war god, Odin. The paladins of the Crusades fought in the name of God by invading foreign lands time and time again. He too numbers among them. Because of his absolute devotion to his "god" and "master" Prince Soma, he can invoke a power that is beyond human. " Sebastian continued, placing a hand on his chest.

 _Kinda like Alexander Anderson, from Hellsing._ I thought in surprise, taking another long sip of the tea.

"It is a power that _our like_ cannot boast…that which is born of belief in and love for another…a power known as faith." the demonic butler finished, and I rolled the tea around in my mouth before swallowing, feeling the warm, sweetened liquid slip down my throat.

"Then why…did he betray me?" Soma mumbled, then abruptly stood and swept all of the fine china off the table with a crash. "WHY DID HE WILLFULLY ABANDON ME?!"

Ciel, Lau, and I jerked away from the table as the boiling hot tea splattered all over the carpet.

"Why you-!" Ciel hissed, but Soma was too caught up in his tantrum.

"WHY?! WHY DOES EVERYONE LEAVE MY SIDE!? WHY?! HOW COME!?" he wailed, then spun and ran out of the room. Sebastian looked at the rest of us.

"Are you three all right?" he asked, and Lau nodded as I looked mournfully at the wet splotch on the floor, the only remnants of the tea.

"We ducked, so we're fine." he said cheerfully, and Sebastian looked at the shattered china all over the floor with a slight frown.

"Oh dear…there goes the Haviland tea set I sent away for because I thought it would be perfect for the young master…" he said quietly. "I do believe the unruly prince needs to be retaught his manners a touch."

He walked out of the room as I sent my mental apologies to Soma for not stopping the butler. But sometimes you needed to be cruel to be kind, and I liked the "somewhat naïve but nice" version of the prince over the "naïve and spoiled" character he started out as. Soma needed a little bit of harsh truth to snap some sense into him, no matter how much it might sting at first.

I sighed and took another sip of the tea as Ciel copied the movement and Lau, who hadn't picked his cup up in time, merely sat there and smiled.

"I say, that butler is taking quite a long time. I wonder what's keeping him?" the Chinaman said after about ten minutes, and Ciel sighed, putting down his teacup and getting to his feet.

"You two stay here." he commanded, walking out of the room. I yawned and took another sip of the tea, trying to psyche myself up to stay awake.

"So, since you are a magician, can I hire you?"

I choked on my mouthful of tea and quickly swallowed, whipping my head around to stare at Lau. He was wearing a semi-innocent smile, and I swallowed for quite a different reason as his ominous air resurfaced. "Um…Hire me for what?" I asked cautiously, and Lau's smile widened.

"For things. I've never seen a real magician before: you seem to be a very useful person to have around." he said evasively, resting his chin on his hand, and I stared at him for a few seconds.

 _No matter how oblivious the guy acts, Lau **is** the head of an Asian crime syndicate._ I remembered as I anxiously licked my lips. _Not to mention an opium den._

"Um, I'll stick with Lord Phantomhive." I said after a few seconds, and Lau's innocent smile widened.

"Aww, that's too bad." he said cheerfully, and I let out a slow sigh of relief. "So, how old are you, anyway?" he asked conversationally as he stole my teacup and took a sip, and I glared at him.

"Seventeen." I growled, and heard a gasp from the doorway.

"You are the same age as me!" Soma said, and I blinked twice.

"What, really?" I asked in shock, and he nodded several times, his surprise turning to acceptance.

"You seem much older." Soma commented as he sat down in the armchair across from me, and Ciel sat down at his place as well. Lau smiled as Sebastian set out some new teacups for us, and I rubbed the bruise-colored circles I _knew_ were developing under my eyes as I took mine.

"Now then. Let us continue our little chat from before His Highness's interruption." Lau said as he picked up the fresh cup, and Ciel nodded.

"First, West must have put Agni up to the aforementioned hanging incidents. With his physical abilities, it would be easy for him to do everything alone. West mentioned a "three year plan", that _'the successful execution of that plan will take place in one week'_ and that _'Agni's right hand is absolutely necessary'_. That was all. The most important factor here is the "one week later" deadline." Ciel said as he picked up his cup, and I snickered as Soma flinched away from Sebastian when butler set the cup and saucer down in front of him.

"If West is using Agni's "Right Hand of God", perhaps they plan to raid a major event?" Lau suggested. "Well, with it being winter now, the large-scale functions have all but ended. And the Queen's Golden Jubilee was held just last year." he added as he took a sip of the tea, and Ciel looked at his butler.

"Sebastian. What events will be held in London one week from now?" he asked, and Sebastian put a hand to his chin.

"One week from now? The young master has received invitations to a coir concert sponsored by Saint Sophia Academy at Westminster Abby, Wagner at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, an exhibition of Indian Culture and its prosperity within the Empire at the Crystal Palace, an exhibition of world currencies at the British Museum-"

"India?" Ciel interrupted in surprise, and Sebastian gave him a look.

"Young master, a gentleman must read all correspondence addressed to him, _no matter what the contents_." he said righteously, and Ciel slouched irritably in his chair.

"Shut up and just give me the details." he growled, and Sebastian sighed.

" _'The exhibition of Indian Culture and its prosperity within the Empire'_ will be held at the Crystal Palace next week. The main exhibits will feature Great Britain's achievements and industry in India. A curry fair will be held as part of the program. The young master had received an invitation to be a special judge at that fair. The fair will have several companies competing with their curries. Rumor has it that Her Majesty, who is known for her love of curry, will come visit the fair. Should I see which individuals are hosting their own parties as well?" Sebastian asked, and Ciel scowled to himself.

"India...curry…that's _quite_ enough." he growled, obviously fed up, and Lau chuckled.

"It seems you've caught on, my lord." he said in amusement, and Ciel winced.

"Yes. Three years. A fair. And as West covets brands and titles, he would only think of one thing. I can't believe how silly this case has turned out to be. I'm so unnerved, I don't know what to say…" he muttered as Soma looked at me cluelessly and I shrugged with equal confusion.

"Hey, wait! I don't understand what's going on. Explain it to me!" Soma yelled at Ciel and Lau, who looked at us.

"Quiet down, Your Highness. You will receive your explanation in due time…from Lord Earl!" Lau said happily, and Ciel grew a tick mark.

"Once again, you were only pretending to know!" he barked, then sighed. "The main dish served at West's Hindustani coffeehouse is curry. In other words, West is attempting to obtain a "Royal Warrant" with his curry." he explained as a little lightbulb popped up above Lau's head.

"Ah, now I understand!" he said, and Soma blinked at them both.

"A royal warrant? What is that?" he asked, still confused, and Lau snapped his fingers.

"Ah, right! Your Highness wouldn't know of it."

"England has a curious system." Ciel explained with a sigh. "Members of the royal family can grant a seal of "approval" to merchants and artisans of whom they are fond. That seal is known as the "Royal Warrant". Stores that hold the Royal Warrant can display that seal on their signs: a Royal Warrant is equivalent to a quality assurance. When a brand receives a warrant, its sales are guaranteed to increase. We were considering applying for a Royal Warrant for our confectionery and toy brand. Some stores have tripled their sales, as Queen Victoria sets the trends for everything from fashion to food." Ciel sighed in exasperation. "The rage for curry has slowed down, so West must want the title, whatever the cost."

Soma frowned in confusion. "I understand that West wants the so-called "Royal Warrant". But what does that have to do with the hanging incidents?" he asked, and Sebastian cleared his throat.

"There are two conditions for obtaining a Royal Warrant. The first is to _'have the product's quality recognized at a fair'_. And the second is _'gratuitous service to the royal family for three years'_. For three years, West has been servicing the royal family with his imports for free. He then caused those incidents to destroy his rivals who were participating in the fair next week. " he explained, and Ciel nodded.

"Military personnel were attacked as well, so it looked as if the culprits were Indians who held a grudge against England. West is probably using Mina to force Agni to participate in this silly plan…and Agni is doing it for the sake of his own god."

Soma started as Sebastian handed Ciel a piece of paper. "The letters left behind at the crime scene held another important clue besides camouflage. Right here." Ciel said, pointing to the drawn-out tongue at the bottom of the note. "Lord Randall was ranting that the mark was an insult against England, but its real meaning is something else entirely."

He turned in his chair and pointed. "You pray to _that_ , no?" he said as Soma gasped softly, and I turned to look at the statue of Kali that had for some reason been left in the drawing room. "Your god is the goddess Kali, with her tongue lolling out. Agni drew this. And who is Agni's 'god'?" Ciel asked. "He did it all for you. So both his prayers and his apology were drawn into this mark." he added as he handed the paper to Soma, who clutched it tearfully.

"Mister Agni worships and lives for you even after he has left your side. You have been blessed with a wonderful butler." Sebastian said with as much approval as I had ever heard from him, and Soma whimpered under his breath.

"Agni…"

"Then all's well that ends well, eh? What a heartwarming story." Lau said happily, clapping his hands. "Well, let's wash our hands of this affair. How about we have the Yard handle the rest?" he asked with equal cheer, and Soma bolted upright.

"Wait! Then what will become of Agni…and Mina!?" he yelped, and Lau shrugged.

"Who knows?" he said, and Ciel yawned.

"We now know that this incident doesn't concern our side, the underworld. And we're not running a charity." he said heartlessly, and Soma gritted his teeth, clenching his hand around the paper.

"I understand…this is indeed my problem. I will think about what I can do to solve it on my own." he said with determination, and Ciel smirked and cracked his knuckles.

"Good attitude. Then I'll get on with my work." he said evilly. "I was summoned to London on this worthless errand. Don't I deserve some reward for my troubles? A Royal Warrant is granted after three years of gratuitous service and one's showing at a fair. The fair will be held in one week. And fortunately for us, the top competition will be unable to participate. Therefore, if our Funtom cooperation participates and wins against West, the Royal Warrant will be ours."

Soma stared wordlessly at Ciel as I did the same, marveling at his sheer audacity. "I was considering moving into the food business after we'd obtained a warrant for our confectionary and toys. If we were to get a warrant at the curry fair, it would be the talk of the town." Ciel continued proudly, and Lau hmmed.

"Indeed. It'll be quite the trophy to mark the beginning of Funtom's culinary line." he said in amusement, and Soma finally cut in.

"But you only have one week to set up a culinary department. Will you be able to prepare specialists in curry, cooking equipment, stores, and such in time?" he asked worriedly, and Ciel took a sip of his tea.

"We won't be needing any of that. Right, _Sebastian?"_ he chuckled, and the demon smiled and put a hand over the place where his heart would be.

"As butler to the Phantomhive family, it goes without saying that I can manage something like this. The Royal Warrant will b-"

"Impossible!"

"Nn?" Sebastian blinked as we all stared at Soma.

"There is no way you can win against West in a curry match!" Soma declared, and Ciel frowned.

"Why not?" he asked skeptically, and Soma fidgeted.

"He has Agni, who in turn has the Right Hand of God." he said, and Ciel snorted.

"The destructive power of the "Right Hand of God" is indeed extraordinary, but we're not competing in a combat sport. This is a curry competition." he said dismissively, and Soma slammed his hand down on the table.

"That's it right there! It _isn't_ a combat sport like fencing. It's a curry match!" he repeated, and Sebastian blinked, slowly.

"Pardon me…I do not quite follow." he said after a few seconds, and Soma's eyes narrowed.

"You don't know Agni's true power. You do not know real curry." he said firmly. "The quality of real curry is determined by the spices in it. One must choose from hundreds of spices. The amount of each spice one uses determines the curry's taste, heat, and fragrance…the spices affect everything. One has an infinite array of choices. Making the best curry is like finding one truth out of all the truths of the universe. But Agni's right hand can do that. With only his fingertips, he selects the best spices from an innumerable selection and mixes in the optimal amounts…to create curry that is nothing short of a miracle. His power to imagine and create a world from nothing is indeed within the realm of godliness. That is why Agni, with his "Right Hand of God", is called Kali's Right Hand! I've never had curry that was better than Agni's. That's why I told him to offer me his right hand forever."

"So the "Right Hand of God"…" Ciel began as Lau finished for him.

"-refers not to godly strength, but to godly curry-making skills?" the Chinaman asked skeptically, and Ciel frowned.

"There you have it. Sebastian?" he asked, and the butler smiled grimly.

"Well, well…I seem to have found myself up against a formidable adversary."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 10.38 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: December 31st, 2015, 8.34 PM USA Central Time


	11. That Butler, Curry Curtailed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reference Arya makes about herself being poisoned is an allusion to when Oliver (the evil cannibal (who is also a sorcerer/magician) that imprisoned her for several months and was the villain of the prequel to this story) spontaneously decided to be a bastard and dosed her food. And drink. (It was never specified which.) Anyway, Arya's been poisoned before. And been in a car crash. And beaten half to death on multiple occasions. And stabbed. 
> 
> She hasn't been shot yet, but to be honest, it's probably only a matter of time.

_Arya's POV:_

I had taken the precaution of completely closing my curtains before I went to bed last night –or rather, earlier this morning– and was thusly awoken not by a bright stream of sunlight stabbing into my eyes, but by Mey-rin ripping them open with a cheerful "Rise and shine, Miss Arya!"

I flinched and yanked the thick cotton blankets up over my head, groaning. I didn't want to check my watch, or any of the other clocks, because right now I just wanted to reject life in general. "Mey-rin, I went to sleep at like Nothing o'clock in the morning. I dunno what time it is right now and I don't _want_ to know. Please tell me I don't have to get up. I beg of you." I whimpered through the quilted fabric, and I felt her tug at one end.

"I'm afraid you do, miss. Some tea will wake you right up, yes it will." she said encouragingly, and I suppressed the temporary, slightly murderous urge to throw her out of a window.

"Right…" I groaned, slowly pulling the blankets down from around my ears. Mey-rin's cheerful face greeted my blurry eyes, and she held up a package.

"You clothes have arrived from the tailor, yes they have."

Curiosity finally gave me enough motivation to sluggishly roll out of bed and start getting ready for the day, watching Mey-rin as she scampered out of the room, presumably to get the aforementioned tea she offered me. I took the morning pitcher of water on my nightstand, leaned out of the window, and dumped it over my head, gasping as the water quickly grew icy in the freezing air of early winter.

I rapidly shook my head, flinging water droplets everywhere, before I leaned back inside, setting the pitcher back down and grabbing the washcloth next to it, vigorously toweling my hair dry. The icy shock had helped me wake up slightly, and I blinked at the large series of packages stacked neatly by the large oak chest at the foot of my bed. There were about ten or eleven of them, and they were all wrapped in brown paper. One had a note attached to the front, and I pulled it off curiously.

* * *

_Miss Aryana Thompson;_

_This is your wardrobe as ordered and paid for by Funtom Co. I labeled them all separately so you don't have to worry about our form of dress code: you seemed to struggle a bit with that. I also noticed your penchant for wearing those intriguing bloomers and corset, so I designed your wardrobe with that in mind._

I turned red, but, I mean, I guess it was her job. I certainly knew that modern-day undergarments would seem exceedingly odd to the people of Victorian England.

_Please use it to your best advantage! Now you should be able to return that dress you borrowed to the maid, and please feel free to give me a call whenever you're in London._

_Cheerio~  
Nina Hopkins_

* * *

I stared at the paper with a blank face for a few seconds, then shrugged and started inspecting the packages. Most of them were labeled "day-to-day" and "business", but there was one, slightly heavier, package that said "formal" and another, labeled "horseback riding".

I found the package that contained my magic cloak, and hurriedly opened it up, taking the black fabric and snapping it out, then swinging it over my shoulders and tying it off. I didn't have a mirror, but as I paced around the room and swished the cloak a couple of times, it seemed to fit wonderfully. I'd never had clothing that was tailored specifically to myself, and I had to say, I was liking it so far.

I pulled the hood up over my head, and it seemed to fit just as well as the rest of the costume, and I undid the strap and pulled the cloak off with a pleased smile, stuffing it into my apocalypse bag and turning to the other packages. I eventually selected one of the "business" packages, opening it up to reveal a dark navy blue-ish dress, holding it out in front of me as I made an uncertain face. I wasn't used to dresses with so much ruffles, but…

 _Well, when in Rome._

I shucked my combat pajamas and pulled the dress on, blinking as I slowly twisted and turned. The fabric was surprisingly comfortable, and now that it was on me…I felt kinda pretty. I subconsciously brushed a hand down the front, enjoying the feel of the fabric.

I could literally count on one hand the amount of females, including the ones I'd met here, that I'd spent any amount of time within the last six or seven months. All that testosterone kinda rubbed off: I hadn't spent any time on feeling pretty in ages. Still, no time like the present. I spun in place a few times and then giggled self-consciously.

_Guess I'll have to work in my exercises before I get dressed for the day._

"Ah! That looks lovely on you, yes it does!" Mey-rin chimed in from the doorway, and I jumped, then turned around.

"Um, if you say so. Here's your uniform back." I said sheepishly, handing her my borrowed dress back as she traded it for a cup of tea. I took the mug of steaming liquid and downed half of it without thinking, then gasped and nearly choked as the sweet-tasting drink scorched my tongue and burned its way down my throat. Mey-rin paused, looking concerned, and I waved her away, taking in a few more breathes before reminding myself to always check any drink someone gave me before swallowing it.

_Not a bad policy to have, actually. I mean, I've already been poisoned with my breakfast once._

I followed my memory and wandered back to the dining room, doing a quiet fist pump and suppressed cheer of _"yes!"_ when I heard and saw the others already there. The townhouse was far larger than any other building I had ever lived in, or even visited as a living space. Britain's house had been a manor in its own right, but it was rather –small. Not only small, but it was mostly gardens, offices, and a library: it didn't feel like a living place so much as a public building.

Ciel looked up and then down as I entered; apparently, although I was blatantly suspicious to him, I was also apparently rather nonthreatening. Soma gave me a preoccupied but friendly nod, and Lau seemed as inscrutable as ever. I sat down at what I assumed to be my designated spot, taking the tea I was offered and tasting it hesitantly, then swallowing once I was convinced I wouldn't scald my tongue –again. I then watched Sebastian offer Soma some curry, which the prince tested cautiously.

"YUCK!"

The other three men turned towards Soma as he made a disgusted face. "Was it not to your taste?" Sebastian asked neutrally, and Soma flinched.

"Gyah! I-it's not that….it's just very different from the curry that I always eat in India, so, well…and this is good in its own way…um…" he stammered, slowly coming to a halt. Sebastian smirked slightly, understanding Soma's worry.

"It is fine. Please continue." he said with a slight bow as Soma let out a sigh of relief and looked back down at the curry.

"First, the flavor is weak, and it has no aroma. Not to mention it's gritty, so the texture is rough on the tongue. This doesn't count as curry." he said firmly, and Sebastian put a hand to his chin.

"How odd. Even after I used the best curry powder available…" he said to himself, and Soma blinked.

"Curry powder? What is that?" he asked in surprise, and I shrugged as I gulped down a mouthful of eggs.

"Curry, which Anglo-Indians have brought back from their homeland, has taken firm root in British cuisine. But as the blending of spices is difficult for amateurs, spices are ground and blended together, then sold as prepackaged curry power." Sebastian explained absently, and Soma frowned and shook his head.

"I've never seen anything like that in India, and Agni didn't use it either. At least, as far as I know…" he admitted, then sighed. "Yes, spices determine the color and heat of curry, but what is most important is their flavor. When they aren't freshly ground, their aroma evaporates. At my palace, I have _masalchi_ dedicated to that task alone." Soma said firmly, and I looked at him curiously.

"What's a masal-chi?"" I asked, and he blinked at me.

"A kitchen helper. They usually do all the dirty work." he said, and I "ah"ed and returned to eating my breakfast.

"So in other words, using something like curry powder, in which the spices have been ground up prior to being packaged and sold, is out of the question." Sebastian commented, returning to the conversation, and Soma nodded several times.

"Yes. And depending on what he put into it, the soup of Agni's curry would look and taste different. I think he chose and blended the spices to complement the ingredients." he mused aloud, and Sebastian looked at his pocketwatch.

"Then we must first track down fresh spices of the best quality. In that, West has the advantage, His company controls the distribution, so he can secure the best of the bunch for himself. he said disparagingly, and closed the watch. "I fear we are running short on time, unless we can find ourselves some traders…"

He trailed off, before we all looked expectantly at Lau, who just so happened to be the manager of a trading company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 10.50 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: January 7th, 2016, 8.28 PM USA Central Time


	12. That Butler, Winning Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who haven't read the first fic for this story, Arya has a journal/diary in which she writes more or less every day, and takes magic-related notes in. (Thus why she had it earlier when they snuck into West's house.)

_Arya's POV:_

> `December 23, (1888) "Kuroshitsuji" Reckoning`
> 
> `(Song) Quote for the Day:`
> 
> `"You hit a wall, you push through it." –(Quote)`
> 
> `Hey hey, it's been forever since I wrote in here. Britain majorly messed up on the spell, so now I'm stuck in Black Butler for an unforeseen amount of time until I can learn the world-transport spell myself. Now that I've brought this up to date, back to the present. Ciel convinced Lau to go get spices for us, and he's been gone since yesterday, presumably getting them. I've been trying to puzzle through the Latin books in the library, with extremely limited success. I've been able to translate a few sentences, but they're mostly garbled; I'm definitely gonna need to learn the actual language instead of the words. My phone is still switched off and at the bottom of my bag, and I'm not gonna use it. I don't really remember any situations where I might need to contact Britain in this anime, but if he screwed up, I might too, and I should conserve the batteries just in case.`
> 
> `My parents must be getting seriously worried…I've been gone for almost six months, and the way things are going, those six months are going to turn into more than a year. Thank god my parents are so laidback; if they were some of my friends' parents, there'd be a manhunt going on.`
> 
> `Things I Need To Do by the Time I Leave "Kuroshitsuji":`
> 
> `Learn Latin –very important. How the hell else am I gonna get home, since Britain can't send me the one they used in the first place?`
> 
> `Learn Greek –See above.`
> 
> `Learn French –See above above.`
> 
> `Learn magical combat –I'm getting back in shape, but what with the Reapers and all that other nasty business, I'm gonna need to know more than a magic wall –which they could probably cut through with their Death Scythes– and a spell to nonliving transport objects from one place to another.`

I capped my pen and closed the journal, stuffing it back inside my apocalypse bag and stretching. I was back in my combat pajamas, which consisted of an old black tank top and equally worn army fatigues. It was actually a surprisingly comfortable –and versatile– outfit.

I ran through my morning exercises, and silently lamented the lack of a running track as I looked sourly at the bandages wrapped around my fingertips. I could tell, merely by the aching feel I had become familiar with, that my nail beds had only halfway healed –if that. The amount of exercise I had been doing kept me in shape, but I hadn't done any running exercise in a while; and since it had kinda saved my life before, that made me nervous.

I got dressed in one of the lacy, ruffled dresses Miss Nina had made for me –this one dark brown and semi-businesslike– and went to the parlor. The earl should be answering his daily mail, and this was the perfect time to talk to him when nothing was going on. I knocked on the oak door –best not to just break in– and then pushed it open when Ciel called "Enter."

I walked in as the young earl looked up at me, slowly putting down his mail.

I folded my arms in determination as I stood in the doorway. "I know that you're probably busy, but we have some things to discuss." I said firmly, somehow managing to sound both sheepish and determined, and he raised an eyebrow, but then nodded to the chair in front of his desk. I sat down, moving my skirts as necessity dictated.

"I'll be quick about this." I began, trying to sound as formal as possible but also get this over with. "I need to learn Latin, Greek, and French, preferably in that order. The books that you have here were only written in that language, and if I'm ever going to advance in my studies I'll need to learn them anyway." I said briskly, and Ciel frowned slightly, resting his chin on his folded hands.

"Why French? For that matter, why Latin and Greek?" he asked skeptically, and I scratched my cheek sheepishly.

"Magicians typically wrote in whatever educated or high-class language there was for the day, according to my teacher. That's why I need to learn French –I already know Italian. Magicians use many different runes and signs for their rituals, and Latin and Greek are one of the core baselines: without using them to complete the spell, I can't get home. Norsk and Slavic too are important too, but the alphabets I need to use aren't based on those." I explained, and he clicked his tongue thoughtfully.

"Alright. Why ask me?" he said after a few seconds, and I shrugged.

"This is your townhouse, isn't it? If there's a "How To" book around here, you'd the one to ask." I said in a matter-of-fact tone, and Ciel smirked slightly, his eye unreadable.

"And what if I don't have any of those books? What then?" he challenged, and I bit my lip.

"Um, I guess I could pay for a tutor or something." I said after a few seconds, and he raised an incredulous eyebrow.

"With what money? If I remember correctly, you fell out of the sky with only that bag of yours for company."

I glared at him. "If I'm one of your so-called branch managers, then you've got to pay me, bucko." I said witheringly, then sighed. "If not, then I guess I can take up street performing or somethin'. I've got enough magic to make a cool act." I hypothesized, and Ciel snorted and picked up a pen.

"Not bloody likely." he muttered grudgingly, starting to write something out. "Fine. You will be contracted and paid under the official Funtom name. I will order tutors for French, Greek, and Latin for you, however, if they are not available, you will be taught by Sebastian."

I gulped, but he continued without noticing.

"Following that, you are to act and treat yourself as one of the Phantomhive estate's servants, albeit one more slightly more exalted in rank than that trio of idiots." he muttered, which I assumed to be a reference to Mey-rin, Bardroy, and Finny. "Should you be found insufficient for any task, I will have Sebastian correct you or pay a tutor to do it for him." he said ruthlessly, before flicking his pen away from the paper and looking at me coldly. "Let me make this clear. You are a member of this household only because I might find you useful. I am not in the habit of giving free handouts, and you will eventually be expected recompense for your stay here. Are we clear?"

I bit my lip in thought, then nodded a few times. "Yeah. That should work nicely."

I turned and looked over my shoulder as the door clicked open. Sebastian stood there with one hand on the knob.

"Lau has returned with the spices." he said neutrally, and Ciel rose, grabbing his cane. I did as well, curious to see what the Chinaman had brought.

I blinked as Sebastian opened the front doors and I saw piles of large burlap bags stacked all over the townhouse courtyard, with Finny and Bardroy already hauling them inside. I quickly rolled up the slightly scalloped hems of my sleeves and grabbed a bag of my own.

"Amazing! I've seen all of these back home in my country!" Soma said in awe as he dipped up a handful of what smelled like sage from one of the open bags, and I moved to one side as Finny carted five of the gigantic bags inside.

"Wooow! So all this stuff all goes into curry, huh?" he asked in excitement, and Bardroy staggered slightly as he lifted a bag of his own.

"Don'tcha dare drop 'em now." he grunted to Finny, and I followed the duo with my own bag of spices.

We dropped them off in the kitchen and went back for more, and I watched as Sebastian picked up a handful of leaves and sniffed it appreciatively. "Each one has such a beguiling perfume. These spices are indeed the finest money can buy." he said in approval, and Lau smiled from his place by Ciel.

"To have me collect this all in the span of a day…what a slavedriver you are, Lord Earl!" he said, sounding eerily upbeat despite his accusation. "Spices are outside our area of expertise, you know. Oh, the trouble I had to go through to get these…"

Ciel humphed as he supervised us. "I suppose even you have you have your uses in times like these." he admitted to Lau, who temporarily recovered his eerie smirk.

"Well, having the Funtom Cooperation owe me one is hardly a bad thing." he said smugly as I dodged Finny's second large stack of bags, grunting a little under the weight of my own.

 _These things must weigh like thirty or forty pounds._ I thought to myself, struggling to lift it over my shoulder like Bardroy and Finny were doing. I was strong, but not quite that strong –yet.

_But someday I will be. **I will be**._

"The without further delay, let's prepare a curry with these." Sebastian said, standing up from the spices and facing Soma. "Prince Soma. As only you know the taste of Mister Agni's godly curry, may I depend on your guidance as to flavor and so forth?" he asked respectfully, and Soma nodded.

"That's fine with me, but…" Soma trailed off as he pointed to the spices. "Can you, an Englishman, manage to use all these spices?" he asked, then squeaked and hid behind Ciel at Sebastian's raised eyebrow. "No, I mean…I'm not making fun of you! Just…it must be hard since you're not used to them…" he babbled, and I shifted the bag over my shoulder and sympathetically patted him on the back with my free hand. He gave me a nervous smile in return, but hurriedly looked back to Sebastian as he spoke.

"I am much obliged by your concern. I think I shall need some time, but let us go about this steadily and see where it takes us." the demonic butler said, then placed a hand over his chest and smiled at us all. "I beg your patience until the curry is complete." he said angelically, and Soma made a small whining sound at the butler turned to his task.

"Will he really be okay? I'm worried…" he said nervously, and Ciel yawned.

"We'll have to wait and see. This calls for an afternoon nap…" he murmured sleepily, and I nudged Soma with my foot and pointed towards one of the sacks.

"C'mon man, grab one and start hauling, or else we'll never get 'em inside." I said as I shifted the one I'd finally gotten on my shoulder, and Soma started and quickly grabbed a bag.

"Right, okay!"

_***Time Skip***_

"Ahhh…my shoulder hurts." I complained as we all marched back into the house, rubbing the offending muscles. Soma was right behind me, both in complaints and the literal sense.

"I never knew manual labor could be so _hard_ …" he whined, swaying dramatically as he staggered up the stairs. I gave him a weary shrug as I switched to rubbing my other shoulder.

"Eh, could be worse. I lived for five months with this complete martinet: I had to run like six miles every day." I said offhandedly, and jumped as Soma crashed into my back.

"Too tiiiired…" he said mournfully, draping his arms over my shoulders as I nearly fell over backwards. "Carry me uuuppp…"

I sweatdropped. "Dude, we're like less than three feet from the door." I told him, and he muttered something in Hindi and clung to me tighter. "Come…on!" I growled as I took a step forward with some effort, his deadweight dragging me backwards. "I thought you were gonna be this big…independent…knowledgeable…prince! All by yourself!" I muttered in exasperation as I made it to the veranda, staggering towards the door, and Lau strode by me, whistling innocently with his hands behind his head.

"Oy! A little help?!" I said indignantly, and he turned to us and smiled wider as I felt a sudden sense of foreboding.

"Ah, isn't it nice to see you two bonding. Well, don't let me interrupt. Carry on!" he said cheerfully, waving innocently to the both of us before opening and closing the front door behind him.

 _Asshole_. I thought irritably, continuing to struggle across the tiles with Soma clinging to my back like a sloth. A very lazy and very whiny sloth. "Look, um, while Sebastian makes the curry, maybe you and me and Ciel could like play cards or something." I cajoled, trying to make him let go or something so I could at least move faster, and he mumbled something. I paused, and then looked over my shoulder to see his eyes closed.

_Are you fucking kidding me?_

"WAKE UP!" I shouted, and he jolted, then opened his eyes and looked at me sleepily.

"Whaaat?" he slurred as I finally made it into the foyer, and I pointed up the stairs.

"Ciel wanted to play cards." I said, deadpan, and Soma instantly let go.

"Wait for me!" he yelled as he pounded up the stairs, and I snorted and followed him, ignoring the tiny twinge of guilt. To my surprise, Ciel and Lau actually _did_ have some playing cards laid out, and Ciel dealt me and Soma in easily.

We played Old Maid for a while, with Ciel more or less continually beating the rest of us senseless. Eventually me and Soma teamed up against Ciel just to survive, with Lau being the strange person he was and playing wildcard against us all.

There was a _clink_ , and I jumped and turned around as Sebastian set several plates down on the low table behind us. "My apologies for having kept you waiting." he said smoothly. "I present you with a curry of tender chicken stewed with spices and the savor of onions. I topped it off simply with some coriander and yogurt."

"Lau, I win with that card." Ciel said as he showed his hand, ignoring the butler, and Lau pouted as he threw down his cards.

"Ehhh, I've been had." he said sadly, and Soma jumped up from his spot.

"You're already done?! It's only been about two hours since you began!" he blurted in shock, and Sebastian assumed a sorrowful expression.

"Yes. It unfortunately took me _a full two hours._ Please forgive me for forcing you to wait for so long." he said apologetically, and Soma sniffed.

"And this aroma, its…almost like Agni's curry. How in the world…and in such a short time!?" he gasped, and Sebastian smirked slightly.

"It was simple. I just sampled all of the spices." he said smugly, and Soma looked shocked.

"Each and every one of them?! The whole lot!?" he squeaked, stunned, and Sebastian smiled.

"Yes. To return to the point at hand, I then blended the spices to match the fragrance of the curry Mister Agni cooked for breakfast the other day as closely as possible." he said as he laid out some silverware, and Soma blinked at the curry.

"That was all it took to recreate the aroma?" he asked incredulously, and Sebastian tapped his nose.

"My sense of smell is a _tad_ better than that of most humans." he said smugly, and Lau smiled happily.

"Come come, Your Highness. _'It is better to get down to work than worry about it'_ , as they say. Why not have a bite first?" he asked as we all got up from the card table, and Soma looked anxiously at the curry.

"Y-yes, all right." he said, and Lau beamed.

"Time to eat~! Let's get started!" he said cheerfully, and picked up his spoon. "This aroma is very different from the last. The spices present an extraordinary bouquet." he commented clinically, taking a sniff.

We all took a bite, and I "hmmed" appreciatively as Lau's smile widened and Ciel raised an eyebrow.

"My, this is delicious! The flavor of the freshly ground spices whets your appetite, and the stewed chicken is so tender it practically melts in your mouth." Lau said appreciatively, and Sebastian looked at Soma.

"Prince Soma, what do you think?" he asked, and Soma shook his head.

"This won't do. The aroma is well and good, but the taste is a whole other story." he said sadly, and Sebastian put a hand to his chin thoughtfully.

"Is that so…Then let us try a spice blend that has a similar aroma but will create a different taste." he mused quietly, and I looked at the curry thoughtfully. If I remembered correctly, Sebastian would be making a lot…

I pushed the plate away. "You know what, I think I'll save room for later."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 10.58 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: January 10th, 2016, 6.32 PM USA Central Time


	13. That Butler, Foreign Legion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a cliché about Victorian women being unable to stand strong language. Is it true? Maybe, maybe not. Can and will I abuse it for the purpose of humor? Hell yes. Let it be also known that (almost) all of the French sentences at the bottom are things Eddie Izzard said (and made fun of) in his show "Dress to Kill".

_Arya's POV:_

After about ten or fifteen minutes –in which Ciel thoroughly trumped the rest of us at Old Man as well as Old Maid– Sebastian returned and dragged Soma –who pulled me along with the excuse of _"I need heeelp dealing with hiiim!"_ I was probably picked as the sacrificial victim since we were the same age and I had already (mistakenly) shown the poor sap some sympathy.

We were both summarily deposited in front of a gigantic table in the kitchen, which was completely covered in soup pans filled with curry. Mey-rin had intercepted us on-course and Bardroy and Finny had already taken up residence against the sideboard.

"Here, I have made a selection of curries that have a similar aroma but differ in flavor." Sebastian said, gesturing to them. "Please sample them and choose the one that tastes most like Mister Agni's curry."

"YOU MADE THEM ALL?! BY YOURSELF!?" Soma squeaked, and Sebastian smirked.

"Yes. I am the butler of the Phantomhive family. Wherever would we be if I was unable to manage something as simple as this?" he asked smugly as he ladled some of the curry onto a dish. Soma looked queasily at the dozens upon dozens of soup pans.

"B-but…I don't think I can eat all of this by myself." he muttered, and I nodded in agreement, rubbing the back of my head. The food Sebastian cooked was awesome, but I was only _just now_ getting back into fighting shape, and I didn't want to slow the process down any further.

"Prince Soma. Your cooperation is necessary so that we may create a divine curry as soon as possible." Sebastian said firmly, and Soma made a face, then straightened.

"V-very well! I shall eat as much curry as necessary if my eating curry is of use to you!" he said in determination, and I tied my hair behind my head in a ponytail in preparation.

"We'll help too~!" the other servants said in unison, and we all got ready to taste test.

"First, we have the curry from before with salt, turmeric, and coriander added." Sebastian said, and we all gulped some down.

"The taste is too heavy, and it's too spicy hot." Soma said in disgust, sticking his tongue out as Bardroy spat flames and ran for the sink, with me right behind. Finny and Mey-rin seemed to enjoy it, though. We ran through six or seven other unremarkable curries before Sebastian lay down one that I liked.

"The next candidate boasts mildness thanks to the addition of coconut milk and yogurt." he rattled off, placing the plates down in front of us.

"It tastes better, but the aroma isn't even close." Soma sighed disappointedly as I gobbled the dish down eagerly. We ran through another half-dozen dishes as Finny eagerly praised each one and Bardroy and I ran for the sink every time a spicy candidate surfaced. Mey-rin wobbled between the two, although her weakness seemed to be the heavier dishes.

"Next up, we have a spicy curry of cumin and cinnamon." Sebastian sighed after a good two hours, and I poked it with my fork queasily. Even though I had only eaten a few mouthfuls of each, there had been a lot of curry choices.

"Now I feel like it's not hot enough." Soma groaned as Mey-rin slumped down, completely unable to eat any more curry. Five minutes or so later, Sebastian returned with another dish.

"My apologies for the wait. I have prepared this with red pepper and cloves to taste." he said, resigned, and I groaned as Bardroy wobbled and fell over, joining Mey-rin.

"The flavor is too much…and heavy…" Soma groaned, burping slightly, and I clutched my stomach as I swirled the curry around on my plate with the fork.

"Dude, I can't eat another bite." I whimpered, and Soma nodded, letting his head fall to the table with a _thud_.

"I think I'm full up to the gills with curry…" he agreed, and Sebastian smiled from above us, sparkles drifting about him.

"Come, the next curry awaits. I added cardamom and garlic." he said happily, and Soma twitched slightly.

"Th-this curry is different from all the others I've had today!" he gasped, whipping upright, as if galvanized by the very scent of the curry placed before him. I watched Soma as he took a bite, knowing that any reaction this dramatic predated something plot-changing in the manga, and watched as he grew very still, his eyes widening. He suddenly looked to the side as Sebastian leaned down to pour tea. "Ag-!" Soma started excitedly, then froze, his ecstatic expression dropping rapidly. Sebastian gave him a raised eyebrow.

"Prince Soma?" he asked politely, and Soma returned his gaze to the plate in front of him.

"This…this curry…it tastes very much like the curry I used to always eat…like Agni's curry!" Soma said, obviously making an effort to calm himself. The other servants all immediately whipped upright and crowded around Sebastian, cheering.

"You did it Mister Sebastian!" Finny said excitedly as Bardroy slung his arm over the taller "man's" shoulder.

"That's our butler for ya!" he crowed, and Mey-rin stared at him adoringly.

"You're wonderful, y'are!" she whispered, and Sebastian, ignoring all of them, cupped his chin.

"Still, to have to go to such great lengths to achieve the right blend of spices…" he muttered disparagingly.

"But it's still not quite right."

The servants all blinked at Soma as he bit his lip. "The taste, the aroma, the heat…are indeed the same as Agni's. However, something …something is still missing!" he hissed in frustration, and Sebastian clicked his tongue.

"And that "something" would be?" he asked disparagingly, and Soma folded his arms.

"Hrrrrn…to answer your question…how should I put it? Maybe that the savoriness and flavor of Agni's curry are more profound." he mused, then blinked. "Yes, that's it! The body! This curry lacks body!" he said excitedly, and Sebastian leaned over him.

"Body? Is that it?" he asked, looming over the other male as Soma squeaked in slight fear.

"Y-yes." He stammered, and Sebastian turned away, "hmm"ing under his breath. I jumped at an unexpected voice from behind us, turning to see Ciel leaning against the doorway.

"In a spot of trouble, are we?" he asked somewhat sadistically, tapping his cane slightly against the floor. "How goes it?"

"Young master. The kitchen is no place for you…" Sebastian chided as Ciel walked over to Finny's plate and swiped a finger through the curry, licking it off approvingly.

"Three days till the curry fair, him? Do the best you can and keep at your research." he told Sebastian smugly, then looked at me.

"Thompson, if you would follow me, your tutor is waiting in the drawing room." he added, and I blinked and quickly got to my feet, following him towards the door. "Ah yes, that reminds me. I would like _gateau au chocolat_ for my afternoon snack. Bring it to me later." Ciel tossed over his shoulder to Sebastian, whose impassive expression didn't falter as he swept himself into a low bow.

"Very good, sir." he murmured as the door shut behind us, and Ciel glanced at me as he swept through the hallway with Lau following behind him.

"Thompson, your tutor is _waiting_." he stressed sardonically, nodding in the opposite direction before looking away.

Clearly, I was dismissed.

Nothing to be gained by being rude –and late– I quickly ran through my memory of the townhouse and picked up my long skirts –the novelty of wearing dresses still hadn't worn off, and I kinda liked wearing the ones Miss Nina had made for me– to run in the general direction of the drawing room. One definite downside about the dresses, even the practical business ones, was that I couldn't run in them unless I picked them up past a "decent" height to lengthen my stride –in other words, past my calves. God forbid men see anything but my toes, and _maybe_ my ankles if I was wearing something risqué.

 _Suppression does odd things to people._ I thought blandly as I quickly skipped up a flight of stairs and then stopped in the hallway to the drawing room, letting go of my skirts and brushing the front of my dress down neatly. No need for whoever was going to be teaching me to be getting the impression that I was a hooligan.

 _However true that may be by Victorian standards._ I thought, sweatdropping, as I opened the door and walked inside. A woman with her grey hair tied back in a bun so immaculate and tight it looked physically painful was sitting at the table, and she rose to greet me with a faint smile on her face.

 _"Bonjour, Mademoiselle_ Thompson. I am to be your instructor, _Madame_ Dufour." she said with a very tangible but easily understandable French accent, and gripped my hands warmly. I smiled and squeezed her hands back, letting her guide me over to the table as we both sat down. "So, how much French do you know?" she asked for a beginning, and I scratched my cheek nervously, trying to remember everything I had ever heard France say in his own native language.

"Um, _oui_ …which means yes…and _non_ , which means no…and, um, er…"

There was another phrase, one I had heard both Canada and France use on multiple occasions, usually stressful ones. "Something that might've been a curse." I finished uncertainly, and she raised a graying eyebrow at me.

"Oh? And what would that be?" she asked in surprise, and I licked my lips.

"Um, it sounded like _files de putte_ -" I began uncertainly, squeaking in surprise as my temporary tutor abruptly toppled backwards. "Oh sh- um, _shoot!_ Shoot! Are you okay?!" I yelped jumping to my feet and helping her sit up.

 _"Mon Dieu miséricordieux!_ Where did you learn that?!" she gasped as I helped her into her seat, and I sweatdropped again.

"Um…well…some, uh, sailors?" I said uncertainly, the phrase "swearing like a sailor" popping into my head, which seemed rather appropriate for the circumstances.

Madame Dufour drew in a long breath. "Well! We will most certainly not be using those kinds of words in our lessons, Miss Thompson. Please sit down and we will begin." she said primly, opening up a briefcase that I hadn't seen from beneath the table and taking out a few pieces of paper. "Repeat after me, if you please. _La souris est sous la table_."

"L-la soo-re es soole tab-le."

_"Le chat est sur la chaise."_

"Le sha es so la cha."

_"Le singe est sur la branche."_

"Le sange es soo la braunch."

_"Ceci est une référence à un comédien."_

"S… _ceci_ …look, can I just have this word by word?"

_"Non."_

_"Merde."_ I muttered under my breath, only for her to give me a withering look.

 _"What_ was that?"

"Nothing ma'am…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 11.04 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: January 29th, 2016, 8.37 PM USA Central Time


	14. That Butler, Fair Fæ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the whole thing with pronunciation, the German part is actually true. If you're a native English speaker, all you have to do to pronounce half of the German phonics is make a sort of "gggk" sound in the back of your throat. (I'm on my third year of learning German, so I would know.) As for the French accent, I have no idea if it's true or not, but the voice actor for France in Hetalia (and Sebastian in Black Butler) said that one time when he was very small and accidentally set his alarm clock to shout in French instead of English, when it went off his mom panicked and burst into his room because from down the hall it sounded like someone throwing up. It may or may not have been the clock, but hey, this is fiction. Who cares whether or not it's exactly true-to-form?

_Arya's POV:_

Say what you will of the English aristocracy, it got things _done_. Barely half a day had passed before Ciel had not only found me a teacher, he had hired her and brought her to the townhouse. Granted, we were in London, but still, it was eerily efficient.

 _Demonic butler aside, I still wouldn't want to cross him._ I thought warily as I continued to struggle through the sentences Madame Dufour had me repeat back, my tongue feeling like it was made of lead. While French and Italian were both Romance languages, the only language I had well and truly mastered was German, which was another kettle of fish entirely. For one, in German any kind of new pronunciation I needed could usually be produced by half-gargling, half-hacking, in the back of my throat. In French, it seemed I accomplished the same thing by dry-heaving without actually trying to bring anything up.

Several long, excruciating hours later, Madame Dufour sniffed a superior sniff and picked up her bag. "Your French is atrocious." she informed me, and to be honest, I had to agree. That didn't make it any less irritating, though.

My French teacher bustled importantly towards the door, tugging on her gloves as she did. "I shall return every Tuesday at four, at which time we shall hold lessons for two hours. _Au revoir, Mademoiselle Thompson."_ she said briskly, and I hurriedly dropped into what I assumed to be a semi-accurate curtsy.

 _"Au revoir."_ I replied belatedly, watching as Sebastian expertly intercepted her and chewing on my lower lip as he led her out to the awaiting carriage and I drifted off back to my room. My troubles with French were worrisome, especially given that it was going to be the easiest of the _three_ new languages I would be learning. At this rate, I might be stuck in _Black Butler_ for _years_ , just to learn the languages needed for the spell, never mind the _actual_ spell _itself_.

Alright then. Nobody said I had to play fair.

As I returned to my room, I carelessly dropped onto the bed and reached over to my apocalypse bag, grabbing my journal out of it and flipping to the back, where my magical notes and theorems were. Sebastian and the Reapers proved that there were magical creatures in this universe, so I was hoping that I could find a familiar face or two to help out with my current problem.

I made a face as I flipped past some specific pages –I definitely didn't want to ask for help from another demon, and the trolls that Norway preferred to use were unpredictable unless you had the power to control them– and finally stopped on one of my very first note pages, clicking my tongue thoughtfully.

> ` **Fairy:** `
> 
> `Fairies, also known as pixies, are one of the smallest, weakest, and most numerous of all magical creatures. They are commonly found in green areas, especially gardens, and often reside in and make heavy use of flowers. Fairies are extremely sensitive to evil and the auras of other creatures, and are easily won over by kindness or gifts from novice magicians. They can be very playful, and will often frolic in a friendly magician's garden or another place of safety. Fairies are never seen with malicious or corrupted sorcerers and give any non-benign magical creature a wide berth, thus making them extremely valued as allies despite their comparatively weak powers. They come in endless colors, varieties, and appearances, and due to their shy nature rarely appear around non-magicians. There are both male and female fairies, although male fairies are even more extraordinarily shy than the females and are rarely seen by humans. Fairies are unusually clairvoyant for their rank and can "predict" events happening in the present or extremely near future. Fairies can grant favors to magicians they find agreeable, although the power and type of these favors will vary with the amount of fairies present and the amount of attachment they have to the magician in question.`
> 
> `(Note– fairies are an entirely different species than Fæ, and can easily be distinguished via height; Fæ are human-sized or larger, and fairies rarely if ever exceed six inches.)`

I knew that I already had a good rapport with the fairies, at least in the _Hetalia_ world, but the problem here was that A) I didn't know if they even existed in this verse, and B) fairies stayed as far away from malevolent creatures as physically (or magically) possible, and Sebastian, who had full run of the townhouse and gardens, was most certainly malevolent. I'd have to wait to make contact until he was nowhere nearby, which might have proved tricky under normal circumstances, but for once this stupid plot was working in my favor. If I remembered correctly, the Glass Palace had several gardens, and Sebastian and the others would be too busy with the curry contest to stop lil' old me from wandering off.

So, bring food, make contact, ask for help in mastering other languages. Sebastian and Soma should be discovering the perfect and/or ass-whooping curry sometime this evening, and the curry contest was in a few days.

This would be cakewalk.

__

_***Time Skip***_

"Woah! What is that big creature?!" Finny squealed, bouncing on his heels as the elephant in the enclosure waved its trunk gracefully.

Soma pointed at it confidently. "That is known as an elephant, a sacred animal. We keep some at my palace too; about ten of them." he said calmly, and Bardroy started from beside me.

"That's crazy! As pets?!" he yelped, and Mey-rin looked pale.

"You don't really keep those huge things in your house, do you?!" she gasped, and I fiddled with the brim of the flat straw hat Sebastian and Ciel had insisted that I wore. Apparently no "proper lady" went without a hat in public, as even Mey-rin had one of the itchy monstrosities perched jauntily atop her cherry-red hair. As for me, I was wearing one of my mixed "formal-outing" dresses, which was a pretty grey color with lacy hems and an open collar, along with the aforementioned itchy straw hat, and had a few chunks of bread in my left pockets for fairy bribery.

"Please do not wander off, you lot." Sebastian said sedately from his place by Ciel's side, wearing his double-buttoned black greatcoat once more as the other three servants (and Soma) typically ignored his order.

_"What is that, what?!"_

_"That's a snake charmer."_

"Hi there, Lord Earl~!"

Ciel and I half-turned to see Lau, who was calmly sitting on one of the stone-block railings with one arm around Ran-Mao, who was sitting between his legs. "The show is about to begin!" he said happily, and Ciel gave him a withering look.

"Well, aren't you bold, womanizing in front of your _client_ like that." he said with a scowl, and Lau beamed, leaning over to gently poke Ran-Mao's cheek.

"Come, come! Ran-Mao is my sister, just my little sister! Though we're not related by blood. She's adorable, isn't she?" he asked cheerfully as Ran-Mao stared straight ahead, not responding to his claims. "I hear the spectators will get to sample the competing curries at the fair, and I was thinking I'd give this little one a chance to try some too!" he added with his normal oblivious joy, and Ciel rolled his eyes and turned away.

"Right then…" he muttered, starting to walk off, and I jumped as Lau suddenly popped up beside us.

"Anyway, is the prince's butler lad really serious?" he chimed, and Ciel frowned darkly.

"He betrayed the master he regards as his God. What else would he be if not serious?" he retorted flatly, and Lau put his hands inside his billowing sleeves, still smiling.

"Be that as it may, I think that West's promise to return the girl once the plan has been carried out is nothing more than a blatant lie." he commented with eerie calmness, and Ciel sighed.

"Pretty much. The likelihood of West's evil deeds being exposed will increase significantly if he relinquishes his hold on Agni after all is said and done, sought-after Royal Warrant in hand or not. If I were in his shoes, I'd…"

"Kill him?"

Ciel gave Lau an incredulous look. "You can't go around killing people off one by one for such trivialities, you know." he said in disgust, and Lau beamed innocently.

"Ehhh? If it were up to me, he'd be as good as dead." he said happily, then looked mischievously at Sebastian. "That aside…what really has me concerned is Master Butler's strategy for today." he added slyly, and Sebastian looked at the shorter man.

"That-" he began secretively, but was cut off by an obnoxiously _mannered_ greeting from ahead of us.

"Well well! Why, if it isn't Earl Phantomhive!"

I recognized the smarmy voice and the slicked-back blonde hair and was about to make a face before I remembered that insulting influential people to their face was a bad idea and quickly composed my expression into something neutral. Ciel quite obviously shared my distaste.

"Yes…hello, Mister West." he said cordially through gritted teeth, and West, oblivious, tipped his hat to us.

"It has been quite some time, my lord! Not since last year's London season, I believe. I'm most honored to make your acquaintance once more…"

As West continued to blather on and on in an attempt to cozy up with Ciel, I decided that this was the best chance I was going to get and drifted off into the crowd, looking for a green, open space. My best bet was the grounds outside of the Crystal Palace, since I didn't want to look like a madwoman for talking to (and feeding) thin air around large groups of people, although I was slightly worried about getting back into the Crsytal Palace without re-paying the entrance fee.

I finally pushed my way through the crowd and sucked in a deep breath of relief, although I then immediately coughed and regretted it: since this was mid-Industrial Revolution and the idea of "pollution" hadn't exactly been invented yet, the very air tasted unpleasantly of oil, smoke, and coal. I shook my head rapidly, nearly dislodging my hat, before I picked up my skirts and hurried down the stone steps and into the gardens.

Luckily, the air here was cleaner and clearer –thank God– and I wove through the few stray couples and families down here for a stroll or picking flowers, looking for a secluded location with bare dirt and/or a stick. After about five or ten minutes, I found one and sat down on the stone bench, slowly picking up the stick and, to all outside appearances, became a bored, maidenly young lady drawing pictures in the dirt. I was, of course, drawing a pentacle, but the stuffed-shirt members of Victorian England had no need to know that, and it really wasn't noticeable unless you were standing right in front of me.

I didn't put any runes in it, but I tapped my booted foot on the pentagon the lines made in the middle, and closed my eyes, concentrating with all my might as I felt the familiar electric tingle of magic travel down my leg. This spell was, in essence, a way of telling any nearby magical creatures _"Hey, I'm a magician, I can see you guys, do you want to talk?"_ Given as fairies were fairly good at sensing the auras of other things, this probably wasn't necessary, but you never know, ya know? My personal aura of magic, which all sorcerers acquired over time and all supernatural creatures could see and sense, was still probably pretty weak. And, since it was what identified me as different from all the other humans that they stayed away from, it was pretty important if I wanted anybody to try to talk to me.

I felt a tugging at my sleeve and opened my eyes, looking down, before I grinned in triumph. A small pixie was floating there, blinking her huge blue eyes uncertainly, but when I gave her a little smile and held my hand out for her to perch on it, she smiled wider and plopped herself done without hesitation. There was a tingle, like a static shock, wherever she touched me, but I was more or less used to it, since all magical auras had that same effect. I studied her as she studied me, sensing more than seeing it as dozens of other fairies began to flutter and perch all around me, some gently tugging at my hair, others settling down on my hat, shoulders, and lap as I giggled quietly. It seemed like I was in luck; there were a _lot_ of fairies in the Crystal Palace Gardens.

The one in my hand, who seemed to be the leader of the bunch, was about four or five inches tall, with magnetic cobalt-blue eyes that took up a quarter of her face –very typical for pixies– and long, sinuous hair that was so blonde it was nearly white. She was wearing a long, slightly puffy dress made out of some kind of white petals, with a gold and garnet broach that was probably somebody's lost earring at her throat. Her wings, which were the iridescent blue of a morpho butterfly, were still, which was partly the reason I had silently invited her to sit on my hand. Much like bugs, constantly flying around could be very tiring for fairies.

A gentle tugging on my thumb by that very same fairy reminded me that I hadn't come here to stare, and immediately, in simple terms, I began laying out my problem. As I talked, most of the fairies who were perched all over me moved to my lap, all listening raptly –which was a good sign. Britain had said that they could be extremely flighty and mischievous, when the mood took them, and I really didn't need any nonsense right now. Their magical auras, which manifested in multicolored glows around their bodies, fluctuated slightly as I talked, which was another good sign: it meant that they were not only paying attention, they were thinking about what I said. I felt the ones in my hair constantly shifting, and I wasn't too surprised that, when they finally left my head and flew down to my lap and I put my hand up, that my hair had been woven into several tiny braids and had more than a few miniature flowers tucked into said braids.

I finally finished, and leaned back carefully, trying not to disturb anyone, as they quietly chattered to each other in one of the many magical languages I had never learned. There were about forty or fifty fairies, all dressed in leaves, flower petals and scraps of bark, with the occasional lost or "borrowed" bit of human jewelry worked in here and there. They had every variety of wing known to man or beast; butterfly, moth, dragonfly, and even a few feathers and bat wings working themselves in here and there.

Luckily for my patience, the fairies were quick talkers, and the leader gently gripped my thumb again. We communicated more in concepts than actual words, this time.

They would help. But why does the young human have some bad magic around her?

 _I live with a demon and his contractor._

Worry, worry, the human would get a lot of special wards from them.

_I have some bread. Do you want some?_

Yes please, yes please. Will the young human be coming back here again?

_Probably not._

Call them anytime, they will come. They like the young human, with the nice manners and the good food.

"Sure thing, dude." I said out loud, then carefully pulled the bread out of my pocket with my free hand and let them surround it with squeals of delight. I smiled slightly as they all quickly divided it up and then flew away, leaving me not so much as a crumb in my open hand.

I watched as their return payment –a horde of tiny magical sigils that only a magician or magician creature could see– swarmed over me and sank into my very skin, occasionally picking out one or two that I knew, such as Guard, Purity, Ward, Strength, and other protective spells before they absorbed into my skin and disappeared. The first fairy that had approached me remained, however, along with two or three others, and as I scuffed out my pentacle and tossed the stick in a random direction, she hovered around my face, waiting for my attention.

"Don'tcha got anywhere to go?" I asked curiously as I tilted my braid-and-flower-woven head backwards, and she grabbed one of my bangs and pulled gently, clearly intending to lead my somewhere. I shrugged and obeyed, picking my way through the gardens and towards the buildings surrounding the Crystal Palace.

_What's the worst that could happen?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 11.13 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: February 23rd, 2016, 1.00 PM USA Central Time


	15. That Butler, Sustaining

_Arya's POV:_

I watched through the corners of my eyes as most of the fairies either flitted away or poofed into nothing the closer we got to public thoroughfares, which I had honestly been expecting. Fairies didn't hanging about non-sighted humans, unlike many other magical creatures, who enjoyed stealing food from people who would never be able to catch them at it. Eventually it was just me and the first pixie, who had placed herself on my shoulder, tugging gently on my hair whenever I deviated from the path she was apparently trying to lead me on.

For those who might question my complacency in being led –especially considering recent and-not-so-recent events– I would like to remind them that fairies were _exclusively_ benevolent creatures, as well as clairvoyant to a certain extent: they could sense things that were literally just seconds or minutes away from happening. Their loyalty, as I had just demonstrated, was also extremely easy to win, so whatever the fairy was leading me to right now, it was going to help me out either now or in the very near future.

Their intuition was also very good, so even if I hadn't told them about a certain problem of mine, they might know-

"Hell! How dare they reduce my plan to ashes!"

I froze as stopped in front of a small alley, seeing someone in a smarmy suit slouched up against one of the walls. It was West, and a Hindustani woman was leaning over him –probably Mina.

 _Why did you bring me **here**?_ I thought urgently to the pixie, eyes wide, and she looked up at me solemnly and put one tiny finger to her mouth, then made a gesture with her other hand. I saw a few faint sparkles of magic drift out from her fingertips, wrapping around the two of us and probably concealing us from sight. I correspondingly shrunk back against the walls, so that if someone came along, they wouldn't trip over me: spells that acted on the sight rarely extended to any of the other five senses.

Mina knelt down beside her husband. "Cheer up…there's always next time." she said in a consoling tone, and I jumped as a familiar voice rang out from right beside my elbow.

"Yes, yes. Next time, quite."

I quickly sidestepped Lau as he obliviously shifted onto one foot, placing a hand on his hip and nearly hitting me with his elbow. "Hiya, you two. Nice try back there." he said cheerfully, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose.

My eyes narrowed slightly as I looked from Lau to the two troublemakers, trying to piece together when I had seen this, where. It had been so long since I'd seen any anime from the outside, never mind this one, but –something bad was going to happen here. I could remember that much, and if I could just remember _what_ …

West and Mina quickly jumped to their feet. "Who are you!?" West spluttered, and Lau gave a blissful little shrug, ignoring the question.

"Lord Earl said to leave the small fry alone, but those who try something once will try it again and again." he said innocently, and the fairy suddenly shrank back against my hair; my hand automatically rose to cover her as my nervousness increased. That confirmed it: if a fairy was uneasy, then something bad was _definitely_ going to happen.

"He's still too soft when it comes to that sort of thing, I guess." Lau sighed regretfully, and chills ran down my spine as his sneaky persona resurfaced again, the Chinaman smirking ominously. "Heh…well, I do find his boyish side rather lovable."

Sudden realization struck me like a thunderbolt as Ran-Mao silently stepped into and blocked the other end of the alley, two large, semi-decorated Chinese meteor hammers dangling from her hands.

Right.

_Right._

"But I must strike some fear into the hearts of the naughty little mice who made a mess of my garden here in the East End." Lau continued happily as I gathered up my skirts and began edging past him as quickly –and quietly– as I could, my heart in my mouth. I heard the thunderous _wham_ as Ran-Mao swung one of the hammers down on the pavement, and, past Lau, broke out into a dead run through the crowd.

I dodged people and carts as various animals belatedly reacted to my unseen presence while their bemused owners tried to calm them, my whole body alight with nerves. The fairy remembered to take her illusion off when I finally rushed back into the gardens around the Crystal Palace, pressing my back against a tree and gasping for breath. I _really_ needed to get back in running shape: this was just disgraceful.

The fairy chirped in concern, gently stroking my cheek, and I carefully waved her off, not wanting to hurt her.

" 'S okay. I haven't run this much in a while." I explained, still panting hard, and she nodded solemnly, taking out a piece of the bread I had given them earlier and nibbling on it while she waited for me to calm down. Apparently her own unease had been quickly forgotten, which made sense: two cases of human murder, while horrible up close, was not something terribly worrying for a semi-immortal fairy. The aura of evil and corruption was small and ended almost immediately after the deed had been done.

I, on the other hand, was still trying to come to grips with the fact that Mina and West had been pounded into a thin red smear on the pavement –or would be within a few moments.

Right.

_Right._

Okay, I had seen people killed before. I had seen an innocent person get killed before. I could just –deal. Mina and West were bad people, and while they didn't necessarily deserve to be _murdered_ because of it, I could still –deal.

A few stray trickles of sweat ran down my neck as I leaned my head back against the cool bark of the tree and gasped shallowly, trying to force my jumping nerves back into complacency. But despite my horror, I had learned a vital piece of information thanks to the fairy, and as soon as I could work my mind back into a more stable state, I would thank her.

Up until a certain point in the anime, Lau was just sorta _there_.

But in the manga, not only was he more active, but he also had an impressive propensity for violence.

So, unless I was suddenly otherwise informed, I was going to assume I was in the manga version of _Black Butler_. Combining Nina's obvious presence to Lau's murderous attempts, it was the most logical and likely scenario.

 _Thank god, no psycho angel twins._ I thought with a sigh of (slightly ironic) relief, and finally held a slightly trembling hand up to the fairy. She gripped my finger reassuringly, but I was well on the way to dealing with the sudden and rather violent murder I had almost witnessed. After all, if I correctly remembered what little of the manga I _did_ remember, there was gonna be a lot more of that style of murder to come.

_Note to self, stay away from the mansion when Ciel and Sebastian go to visit the circus. And learning to shoot that Colt of yours properly probably wouldn't go amiss either._

I finally straightened up, brushing my dress off as the fairy fluttered in front of my face, looking anxious. "I'm fine." I told her confidently, then held my hand out to her, palm upwards.

She landed, and I closed my eyes, envisioning another simple pentacle in my mind. While this was technically supposed to be easier than actually drawing it out, I still had a bit of trouble correctly calling to mind all of the appropriate lines.

Slowly though, my palm began to glow with magic, and the fairy squealed in joy. I watched the light fade as she held out her own tiny hands, slowly pulling it into herself like a cat basking in sunlight. I half expected her to purr.

Magical creatures –and most magicians– liked things to be even: if someone does you a favor, you should repay them, preferably as soon and generously as possible. It was just common courtesy; she had given me protection and some vital clues that would help me in future, and I was giving her a surplus of magical power that she could use however she pleased. It was a completely even trade, and besides, if I _hadn't_ repaid her, that figured me as ungrateful and rude, two things that weren't good no matter what supernatural or mundane kind of person you were.

Also, since in any kind of sorcerous ranking I was still an apprentice, I felt like it would be best for me to start out on the right foot.

The fairy finally absorbed all the power I had given her, and smiled up at me, giving my palm a reassuring pat. She then flitted off, and I pulled back the sleeve of my dress, checking my watch. It was almost four o'clock –16.00, as the Europeans would put it– and the sun was already setting.

I quickly picked up my skirts again, exposing my stylish Italian boots (courtesy of the aforementioned birthday party which also got me my winter coat and watch) and making tracks for the Crystal Palace. I didn't want to get left behind, and I certainly wouldn't put it past Ciel –or Sebastian– to "conveniently" forget me after I wandered off, to teach me a lesson in staying put when my employers told me to.

Luckily, I made it to the Palace and saw that Ciel's carriage was still out front, then promptly ran into Mey-rin –literally. We both nearly fell to the ground, but out of sheer dumb luck –or one of our innate sense of balances– we kept on our feet.

"There you are, Miss Arya!" she said worriedly as we finally got un-tangled and pushed away from each other, sliding her glasses up her nose and grabbing me by the sleeve. "You missed a lot of exciting things, yes you did!" she squealed, tugging me towards the entrance. "Mister Sebastian won the trophy-"

_Le gasp, I **never** would have thought._

"-and we even got to see Her Majesty in person, yes we did!" Mey-rin babbled as we met up with the others, and Bardroy snorted as he loaded something into the carriage.

"She looked like a funky old granny to me." he said dismissively as the native Brits around us all gasped in dismay, and I held my hand over my mouth, trying to stifle a snicker.

"Victoria is the Queen of Great Britain." Sebastian's muffled voice said from inside the coach, and he got back out, apparently having placed something inside. "Not only is she the ruler who has established the most illustrious era in British history, and expanded Britain's international colonial reach to such an extent it has been dubbed "the country upon which the sun never sets", she also sets the trends for everything from fashion to social functions and popular dances, and boasts the unconditional favor of her people."

He finished his little speech by giving me and Bardroy deeply disapproving glares. "It is neither wise nor appropriate to mock her." he added, and Bardroy gulped as I looked down and scuffled my foot against the dusty street shamefully. Not because of Sebastian though, because honestly he probably cared about Queen Victoria just as much as we did (but had to object to our mocking, being a butler to a nobleman in service to the queen and whatnot), but because I had been taught magic by Britain, and it wasn't very nice of me to go around making fun of one of his favorite rulers –he had ranted about how awesome she was on several occasions.

 _Sorry, Britain._ I thought sheepishly as I got into the second, smaller carriage that was for us servants, and Ciel, Sebastian, Soma, and Agni all got into the first one.

I opened my journal and began paging through it, finding a clear page and starting to copy down everything I remembered from Madame Dufour. Then I sat there and stared, my forehead creasing as I tried to make sense of absolute gibberish –and, perhaps predictably, failed miserably.

After a while, though, there was a tickle in the back of my mind, much like the tingle I got from touching magical creatures, and the slightly stilted words all of a sudden seemed to make _sense_. I smirked proudly, giving myself a mental pat on the back as I began to calculate how long it would take for me to completely master French and move on to Greek or Latin, with further magical help from Britain's pixie population.

I could do this. I could totally do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 11.20 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: March 10th, 2016, 8.46 PM USA Central Time


	16. That Butler, Moving Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Xs on Arya's theoretical tombstone represent her years of birth and death, and since this story is posted on the Internet and she left our world in the exact "present" time, her birthdate is continually moving around, since she is technically always 16 in the current year. Her death date is of course also theoretical, so it is also represented by Xs.

_Arya's POV:_

I busily folded up the dresses and other clothing that Miss Nina had sewn for me, before putting them in my apocalypse bag and somewhat halfheartedly hoping that neither Sebastian nor anyone else would notice that I had managed to stuff the entire contents of my wardrobe –and some extra– into a satchel that didn't even come up to my knee, excepting when I stood it straight up. The dumb straw hat that I had been forced to acquire earlier hung askew on my hair, and I had probably missed a few buttons on my winter coat when I shrugged it on.

For those who wonder about my haste in packing, Mey-rin had bounced in this morning and said that we were driving back to the Phantomhive estate today, and that after she finished helping the other servants throw dust sheets over all the furniture, she would help me pack.

Given as I my bag could not only selectively hide certain objects, I could actually literally stick my arm in it up to the shoulder –and probably more than that– I was rather eager to get everything tucked away before the well-meaning but very mundane maid could discover my apocalypse bag's somewhat unearthly properties.

_And speaking of…_

I subconsciously traced my fingers along the Colt in its holster, stashed under my heavy winter coat. I had been practicing unloading, reloading, and cleaning my Colt in my room, although I still didn't have the bullets or the confidence to practice with it.

 _Not to mention Ciel would probably have Sebastian kill me if I messed up his townhouse with bullet holes._ I thought with some irony, then straightened my hat with a growl, mentally cursing the straw confection to the deepest pits of hell. I finally got all my clothes and accouterments into my apocalypse bag, spared a moment of worry about whether or not I'd be able to find them in there, and then shrugged, swinging it onto my shoulders just as Mey-rin entered.

"Oh! You're done already, miss?" she asked in surprise, and I smiled cheerfully, pushing my hat back on my head just a little bit.

"Yup!" I told her confidently, and she peered inside my wardrobe and then turned around, a question mark appearing over her head.

"…your luggage, miss?" she asked in confusion as she stared at me with my lone bag, slung over one shoulder, and I offered it to her silently.

"I'm really good at packing." I said sheepishly as a host of question marks grew over her head, obviously confused as to where all my things had gone. "I can carry it myself." I added, and she smiled brightly.

"Well, if you wish to, it's no problem, yes it is."

 _Thank god for people minding their own business._ I thought with a sigh, following her down the corridors as we headed down towards the courtyard and street. Most of the others were already inside the carriage or preparing its outside, depending on their station, and I heaved my bag up onto the roof as Bardroy tied it off, giving me a friendly nod as I grinned back at him and went to go find something else to make myself useful. Traveling from point A to point B was a lot more complicated than I was used to around here; everything that wasn't too heavy to move or a part of the townhouse's furnishings had to come with us, and it would take a goodly part of the day to travel the twenty or so miles from London in the carriages Ciel had acquired. (I didn't know if they actually belonged to the Phantomhive estate or he'd just hired them, but either way, it was impressive.)

Since the "season" and the Curry Arc was over, Ciel was returning to his actual estates outside of London, bringing the rest of us with him as a matter of course. I was of two minds about the move. On one hand, there was the Phantomhive manor, which no living fangirl (or boy) had ever set foot in. On the other, it was really far away from London, and I liked having the option of a major city nearby if I ever needed to flee from a certain demonical someone. Granted, it was extremely unlikely he would pull anything without Ciel telling him to, and I had given Ciel no reason to tell him to, but I liked to cover all options. It made me feel safe.

However, we soon set out regardless, and I pulled my journal out from inside my Russian jacket and balanced it on my knees, letting Finny and Mey-rin make comments about all the buildings surrounding their route back to the manor as I took out my –luckily not too futuristic-looking– favorite pen.

> `December 29th (1888) "Kuroshitsuji" Reckoning`
> 
> `(Song) Quote for the Day:`
> 
> `"Denn die Todten reiten schnell. (For the dead travel fast.)" –(Quote)`
> 
> `I apologize in advance for my sucky penmanship, since I'm writing this from the back of a very bouncy cart while Bardroy yells at the Londoners and their traffic. London is so much different now than how it was when England let me wander around, everything's smokier and dirtier and just in general smaller. Not that it isn't bad, because everyone's clothing is a lot more interesting, and it's kinda (majorly nerdily awesomely) cool to see things how the world worked several hundred years ago. I mean, nobody alive has ever seen this kind of authentic historical representation. History buffs, eat your heart(s) out. Also, since everyone was too busy with the curry competition to have Christmas, I missed out on poor ol' Saint Nick's annual celebration. (Finland would be ashamed of me. I have disgraced his favoritest holiday in the history of ever.)`
> 
> `Focus!`
> 
> `Okay, so the curry competition is over, so if my memory serves me correctly the Noah's Arc Circus should be the next little problem to perplex us. (Say that fives times fast. Problem to perplex us. Problem to perplex us. Problem to perplex us. Problem to perplex us. Problem to perplex us. Hehe, this is fun.) `
> 
> `My apologies to my future self. We had a lot of sugary things for breakfast this morning and I'm a bit giddy, not to mention the fact that the world is so full of snow and brightness and cold that you can like taste the energy on your tongue. Pluswhich I'm once again in a situation that fangirls would kill to experience. Yours truly is a bit excited over here. And cold. (Note to self, buy earmuffs. Or a hat that actually covers my ears. And some mittens. A scarf would be nice too. Stupid winter.)`
> 
> `I also need a lot of time and practice to be able to use my Colt as anything but a visual deterrent. I mean, thanks to Germany and Prussia I can load and clean it pretty fast, but if my aim is the same as it was a few weeks ago when I shot at Oliver (see previous entries) I'm in trouble for when the scarier and more aggressive characters start showing up. Granted, for the Grim Reapers n' stuff the Hetalian concept of "shooting them won't kill them but it'll sure as hell slow 'em down" should apply. I really don't want to kill any named characters, but if it's me or them, I'm knocking over some tombstones.`
> 
> `My French is going okay. So far it's mostly just words and some very small sentences. Lots and lots of repetition. (...Beaucoup de répétitions. Beaucoup, beaucoup de répétitions.) The fairies do seem to be keeping their promise of helping me out though, because there's this little extra edge at the back of my mind that helps me stay focused whenever I'm studying, ya know? Pixie power is awesome. I'm going to try and feed them some more when Sebastian is off in London with Ciel and looking around at the circus, it never hurts to give magical creatures too much human food. They're like totally addicted to it. It makes an easier bribe than magical power, since it takes energy out of me to draw the magical power out of the surrounding environment, not to mention the fact that it drains magical power from the area around me and leaves a sort of "footprint" for anybody who knows what magical power looks like.`
> 
> `If I know Oliver (and I do, far more than I'd like) he's probably absolutely insane with rage by now, and if I leave too much of a footprint, he might find just what he's looking for…`
> 
> `I need to stop that train of thought before it makes me stop using magic, period. Oliver and all of the other 2p!s have been kicked to the farthest universe possible away from me and the Hetalian world by extension. They are never coming back, and even if they do manage it sometime in the future, it'll take them so long I'm either A) an old granny that'll have a heart attack just from the surprise of seeing 'em or B) already dead.`
> 
> `I want to take a moment to imagine the second option, wherein they finally fight their way back to my world, find out where I live(d) and then get directed towards my grave and then they all just stand there staring at the headstone for a few seconds, realizing that I'm dead and they can't touch me.`
> 
> * * *
> 
> `Aryana Thompson`
> 
> `XXXX-XXXX`
> 
> `RIP`
> 
> ``
> 
> `Fuck you Oliver, I win.`
> 
> * * *
> 
> `I would pay money to see that temper tantrum. I would pay buckets of money. Under certain circumstances, I would sell my soul for a chance to witness that beautiful momentary scene of irony. In fact, Imma gonna put that on my headstone just to confuse people, and on the off-chance that Oliver and the others ever actually do manage to get to my world. Although the people that design headstones probably don't allow expletives. Maybe if I bribe them?`
> 
> `Ah, hell. It's worth a try.`
> 
> `Ehm, anyway. I know that the circus members attack Ciel's mansion when Elizabeth is in residence and Ciel's gone, and since he seems to have no intention of going to London anytime soon, I should have a window of opportunity to get things done. I should prioritize. Military stuff first, magic stuff second. Survival is slightly more important than getting home, as I can't get home if I'm a bloody corpse. Or any other kind of corpse, for that matter.`
> 
> `Whatever. We're on the bare road now, so I gotta put this away before I get ink all over the pages.`
> 
> `Things I Need To Do by the Time I Leave "Kuroshitsuji":`
> 
> `Learn Latin –very important. How the hell else am I gonna get home, since Britain can't send me the one they used in the first place?`
> 
> `Learn Greek –See above.`
> 
> `Learn French –See above above.`
> 
> `Learn magical combat –I'm getting back in shape, but what with the Reapers and all that other nasty business, I'm gonna need to know more than a magic wall –which they could probably cut through with their Death Scythes– and a spell to nonliving transport objects from one place to another.`
> 
> `Get back in running shape –I can still do most of my exercises, but I need to find a way to get back my speed. It's been extraordinarily useful in helping me stay alive thus far, and I kinda like being alive. I'm used to it.`
> 
> `Learn how to use a gun –Specifically, my Colt Action revolver. I need to be able to defend myself, I can't phone in my self-defense anymore like in Hetalia with the others. I don't know hand-to-hand combat or martial arts, nor am I terribly intimidating all on my lonesome, so a gun should be very useful.`
> 
> `Shop –Even though this is the middle, tending towards the end, of winter, I am in desperate need of warm clothing besides this awesome and in all ways holy coat. That and some more ammo for my Colt, some non-perishable food to replenish my apocalypse bag's emergency stores, some souvenirs for back home…`

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 11.29 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: March 15th, 2016, 2.48 PM USA Central Time


	17. That Butler, Bite of the Ant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About running in a dress, I have actually done so and it's surprisingly not all that hard. And this is not the "oh I'm late" running, this is the "there is a herd of zombies behind me and I must run or die" running. 
> 
> It's an interesting story actually, you see my family was at some kind of cousin's (may have been an actual cousin or a cousin a few times removed, I can't really remember) wedding, and of course all the kids were bored out of our collective skulls, so we started up this game of tag –in full wedding regalia. I don't remember who won, and I don't think we even had a winner because the parents interrupted us and said we might tip something over if we kept running around, but still. I have run in a dress, and outran a bunch of sugar-high elementary kids while doing so. It's not that hard. (Granted, my dress was sheer and had slit sides and I was running barefoot, but like. Still.)
> 
> Also, Arya is about a hundred years off with the date of the French Revolution, but we all have to remember that she hasn't been in school for roughly a year, and she had only finished two years of high school before that accidental spell came along and messed things up for her.

_Arya's POV:_

I was woken up out of my light doze by the cart rattling back onto a solid surface, and sleepily tipped my itchy straw hat up. Mey-rin was still conked out, but Finny was awake, talking eagerly with Bardroy. The three of us were nevertheless tightly packed together for warmth, and I yawned again, then shivered.

 _Must get mittens. Or a hat. Or both. Urgent note to self._ I thought with another jaw-stretching yawn, sitting up slightly to see what we had driven onto.

Apparently it was more cobblestones, and as I sat up, looking past Bardroy and the horses, there was the Phantomhive manor, in all its glory. I whistled under my breath as we drove closer, tipping my hat back further on my head. It was at least four stories high –probably more, as it included a basement– and had three wings that I could see, all of it built with some very nice gothic architecture, covered grey stone and climbing green ivy.

Now _that_ was a manor.

 _Apparently being more-than-normally loyal to the British crown pays off, over the generations._ I thought musingly, readjusting my hat so it wouldn't fall off and then sitting up a little bit to take in our surroundings. We had just driven out of what appeared to be some kind of forest, although from here I couldn't tell how big or small it was. The front lawn was immaculately groomed and had what looked like it could be a fountain, in warmer weather, as well as several hedgerows and gravel paths leading off onto the grounds. A flight of elegant steps led up to the manor proper, where I half-expected Sebastian to be waiting, tea tray in hand and an unreadable smirk on his face.

 _There has to be a word for "that feeling you get after reading something a billion times and then going to the real place it's based on and being surprised that the characters aren't there."_ I thought pensively, clicking my tongue against my teeth.

There _had_ to be.

Irrelevant musings on multi-dimensional déja vu aside, we had finally arrived at the Phantomhive manor. I nudged Mey-rin awake as the horses slowly clopped to a halt, and Finny jumped eagerly out of the cart to –apparently– go help Sebastian and Ciel unload their luggage as the rest of us waited for our turn to assist, which we would have to do before talking our own things aside.

I kicked half-heartedly at the snow as Mey-rin nearly fell asleep on my shoulder again, grumpily watching Ciel sweep inside the house with Sebastian close behind. Already I was learning how society was arranged prior to all those nice equal-rights things that the French Revolution had established; everybody had to do things for the nobles, while the nobles sat around and chilled. Since I was technically part of the servant class, we had to get Ciel's luggage inside first, _then_ we could transport our _own_ stuff into the safe confines of the manor.

_Hey Big Bothers France, Russia, and America, it's me, Arya. Can you share some of your equal rights for all men ideas with Britain?_

_…I don't even care about women at this point, I'll use an illusion…_

_***Time Skip***_

Okay, so apparently Ciel did not trust me around his personal effects. After Finny took as much as he could carry and Bardroy drove the two carriages back somewhere, Mey-rin and I stepped up to the plate…sorta. Barely had I touched the handle to one of the suitcases when Sebastian suddenly popped up and "politely escorted" (read, made me leave on pain of death) me away from the carriage. Disgruntled as I was –what, did Ciel expect me to put a magic circle on his underpants or something?– I was actually pleased to have this chance to converse with the man (loose term) who more or less ran the day-to-day things around here. This was my chance to get started on my list.

"So, Mister Sebastian," I began as we walked down towards the servant's quarters, somewhere in the basement. Occasionally I had to skip forward a pace, as he was much taller and had a much longer stride than I did. "Is there a running track or anything around here?"

He glanced down at me and raised an eyebrow at that perfect "and why would you be asking suspicious person whom I don't particularly like" angle. "There is a trail for horseback riding, but it is not something an ordinary person should transverse." he answered smoothly.

_Fuck._

Then another idea popped up, and I looked at him again. "Well, can I borrow a horse, then?" I asked hesitantly.

Oh look, it's the eyebrow again. "You are capable of riding a horse?" Sebastian asked as he looked down at me, sounding faintly surprised, and I gave him a sheepish grin.

"Well, yeah. Normal riding, not-"

_Ah heck what was that weird position they made women ride in way back when._

"-sidesaddle, though."

Since I had grown up on a former-farm-turned-horse-ranch, I had learned fairly early on how to ride. I hadn't practiced in years, but hey, it wasn't a skill you quickly forgot. Dad had made me learn because he had briefly entertained the idea of me guiding people around the trails (which was quickly discarded, since our ranch wasn't big enough for people to get lost on), and the fact that, and I quote, "we make our living off of these frickedy-fracking animals so you had better learn how to ride 'em or you'll end up disgracing the family name in front of our clients, no pressure."

My dad was very strange.

Anyways, my contact with the horses owned by my family had been minimal after about thirteen, when my parents could no longer guilt-trip me into walking/biking the half-mile to feed them, but I remembered more than a few basics about cleaning, taming, and feeding the large, occasionally temperamental animals. (For those who do not believe in horses being temperamental, please watch the animated movie _Spirit_. It's not a very big exaggeration.)

Moving on. My point is that I was neither a horse whisperer or a horse nerd, the kind that goes and tells their problems to their favorite horse (Insert Color Here) Beauty while brushing them in a sunlit stable. I took a lot of that sort of crap at school when I was little and 'twoud prefer it never being mentioned again. Just because my family owned horses did not make me a horse-fanatic, any more than owning a dog makes you a crazy dog lady.

Sebastian interrupted my internal emotionally-scarring-backstory monologue by abruptly changing direction. "The Phantomhive estate boasts a truly magnificent stable. There should be a mount adequate to your tastes there." he said in that "I work for the best people in the world" voice he used on occasion, usually when telling other people about the Phantomhives, and I rolled my eyes and followed him. Having to be a walking, talking billboard all the time would drive me absolutely insane: yet more proof that Sebastian was absolutely unnatural. Besides, you know, the whole demon thing.

The manor was at least six times the size of the townhouse and I could already _feel_ myself getting lost, and had Sebastian not been leading the way I probably would never have been found again. (And maybe even when he was leading the way.)

"Mey-rin will direct you to your shared room when you have finished conducting your business in the stables. Dinner is at 19.00 and _you_ , specifically, are to retire at 20.00, barring anything my master wishes you to research."

I mentally calculated it all out on my fingers as I continued to walk-skip after Sebastian; right now it was probably sometime around three in the afternoon, so going by everybody-but-American time that gave me five hours until dinner. Given as it usually took roughly thirty minutes to get a horse ready and then clean them off when you were done, I had four hours to get back my old skill. Possibly less, since I was not terribly confident in my ability to remember how to saddle a horse, especially by using whatever ungodly so-called equipment they had back in 1888.

 _Nearly 1889._ I realized with a thoughtful "huh" of interest, stopping dead as Sebastian finally entered the stables and turned to face me.

"Please wait here." he said with an angelic smile that instantly set me on guard, and vanished into the hay-smelling gloom. I began frantically running through all the things that could be used as murder weapons in any given stable, then remembered that me and Sebastian had called pax, to use a delightfully Ye Olde British term, and relaxed. Slightly. Demons were demons, after all.

My ears pricked up at the familiar clopping sound of a horse's hooves, and I turned slightly to see Sebastian leading an already-saddled horse by the reins, still smiling with all the innocence he could muster.

I gulped.

The horse he was leading was _huge_ , and I was pretty sure that wasn't just because I hadn't seen one in a while. It was dark grey all over, and had the powerfully built form and broad back of a charger or plowhorse. It tossed its head to the side, eyeing me, and I was pretty sure it wasn't impressed with what it saw.

"This is Dämon." Sebastian said as his angelic look faded into a neutral smirk. "His line was imported from Germany several years ago, so they are quite valuable. Don't damage him."

 _Right, like he isn't going to damage **me**._ I thought as I fearfully stared up at the giant horse.

"…is there a problem?" Sebastian asked smoothly after several seconds, and I gave him a foul look as I reached for the reins.

"No, sir." I muttered through clenched teeth, and Sebastian's mouth twitched slightly in what might have been a smirk if the lighting was right, and he let go, walking away. I watched him as he went, internally cursing his demonic self to the lowest reaches of hell as I tightly gripped the reins.

In hindsight, that last bit may have been a bad idea.

Dämon, sensing in that really unfair way that horses seemed to have that the person gripping his reins was perhaps not the most in-practice rider, suddenly screamed a challenge and reared backward, and I screeched as my arm was nearly wrenched out of my socket, actually lifted up into the air by his backwards momentum. I frantically grabbed the reins with my other hand as his foot lashed out within an inch of my hip, knowing that the only way to get him –and myself– back on the ground was to hold on to the bridle and weigh his head down. I curled my legs up close to my chest as he continued to kick and neigh, hoping desperately that my bones were not about to be broken by some steel-shod hoof.

Eventually he calmed down and sank back onto all fours, and I shakily extended my feet and stood upright as well. My shoulders, especially the right one, were screaming in pain, and I rubbed it as I glared –hopefully menacingly– at the now-placid horse.

Apparently Mister "Demon" was well-named.

"Alright, listen to me you demonic little pony." I snarled, gripping his bridle tighter and pulling his head down, looking him in as the eye best I could given our species difference. "I'm the human here, _I'm_ in charge. You watch your ass."

Dämon rolled his head sideways to look at me, and his black eye seemed to hold a wicked gleam of challenge. _Oh really, small child? I'm sneezed out tougher things than you._

I realized how schizophrenic this was and glared at him, turning around and starting to lead him outside. I stopped dead as I realized that he wasn't moving an inch, the reins jerking at my sore shoulder as they were pulled taunt, and I whirled around and glared at him again.

Dämon snorted derisively at me, standing stock-still with all the immovability that a 900-plus-pound animal can manage. _Told you._

Alright, two could play this game. I glanced around for any kind of solid item within reach, and quickly tied Dämon to an unmovable iron ring fixed on a nearby post. That done, I picked up my skirts and started searching the stables. I checked lofts and moved boxes and bags to the side, making sure to look inside them first. If this place was anything like the ranches back home, then they would have–

A barrel that was…yes! Full of apples!

I victoriously grabbed one and then put three or four extras in my pockets, walking back towards where I had left Mister Dämon. His ears flicked forward and then back as he saw me, both scenting and seeing the apple in my hand. I grinned.

 _Let the games begin._

I glanced over my shoulder to mark our position, then turned back to the horse. Dämon remained still as I untied him from the post, and I quickly took a large step backwards, holding out the apple. Slowly, as if he was only doing it to humor me, the huge grey horse stepped forward. I wiggled the apple a little, taking another large step back, always keeping my grip on the reins. He slowly, lazily, took another step forward.

This excruciatingly slow game of red-light green-light continued until we were actually outside the stables, and I quickly glanced around for the mounting block as I took yet another step backwards. Dämon nearly stretched his head out and got the apple at my moment of inattention as I hurriedly looked back towards him, steadily walking backwards towards the block. I quickly looped his reins around the hitching post right next to it, and held my hand towards him, flat and palm-up with the apple balanced in the middle. This was the part I was most nervous about, since it meant _my_ hand was going near _his_ teeth. Dämon gave me another measuring look, probably knowing exactly what I was thinking about, then slowly bent his head down and began to much on the apple.

Apparently I had proved my worth by getting him out of the stable: he didn't use his teeth. I sighed in relief and waited until he was done before withdrawing my hand and walking around him to the block, before mounting up like I had done a thousand times before with our very own horses. Granted, this guy was a lot bigger and broader than the ones we owned, and I winced as I slipped my feet into the stirrups. I could tell already, I was going to ache in the morning.

For those who were not raised the way I was, it is a basic fact of human anatomy that putting something roughly three feet wide –vis, a horse's back– between your knees for extended periods of time will stretch out your calf and quad muscles demonically. The bigger the horse, the more they stretch. The more they stretch, the more they will hurt like a bitch afterwards. Think of it as straddling a barrel, only this barrel will rock back and forth as it moves and it will also jolt you up and down, depending on the speed and gait of the horse.

This particular barrel also had a penchant for being pure unadulterated evil.

I had barely gotten a good grip on the reins before he shot forward, and I swore and hauled back on the reins, making him rear up again and neigh shrilly. Since I hadn't ridden a horse in years, my posture and grip was not what it should be and I slipped right off of him, landing on the frost-hard ground with a thud and a round of ear-blistering curses in multiple languages –mostly Italian, since my Italian teacher had the cursing capabilities of a god and I had inadvertently picked up quite a bit from him.

Dämon tossed his head and pranced smugly around me in an almost-perfect circle, whinnying in what sounded eerily like derision. _Just because I let you get on me doesn't mean I'm going to play nice._

I wiped some snow off my face and sat up again, glaring murderously at the horse. I got to my feet and made a snatch for the reins, but he jerked his head away and I missed. Glaring at him, I sidestepped and grabbed for the trailing leather straps: he ducked his head and flirted away from me. Seeing red, I was momentarily tempted to get out my Colt and fill this creature's head full of bullets, but just as I was diving my hand inside my dress I felt the apples in my pocket, and yanked one of those out instead. Humans were at the top of just about every food chain ever. I had the power of reason and bribery. I would beat this horse if it killed me.

Waving it under his nose, I got Dämon to back up towards the mounting block. We repeated the same procedure until I was once more firmly seated on his back, and I felt his muscles bunch as he once more broke out into a gallop, just to test me. I quickly squeezed my legs as hard as I could and jerked the reins back, making him rear once more. However, this time I was prepared, and continued to grip his sides as hard as I could with my out-of-practice legs and saw back on the reins. After about a minute of heart-stopping vertical gravity, he sank back onto his front legs and I –slightly– loosened my grip on the reins. He turned his head and regarded me with one thoughtful black eye.

 _You're not as much of a novice as I thought._

I gave him a no-nonsense glare and nudged him towards the open paddock I spotted nearby with the reins. I was not stupid enough to trust this horse on an open trail, and just because I had been lucky so far didn't mean that this very large and very temperamental animal couldn't break my bones –or worse– if given an opportunity. His hooves were entirely capable of bashing my skull in with one well-placed kick, and if he reared and I fell off and I hit a rock on the way down…

Dämon shook his mane slightly and I instantly tightened my grip, wary of another trick. When riding horses, this one in particular, what-ifs were unimportant and quite potentially dangerous. "No funny business, buddy boy." I muttered under my breath as I glared down at the back of his neck, and he whinnied quietly, as if to say _Don't push your luck with me, small fry. Just because you stayed on the second time doesn't make you worthy of my greatness._

His walk turned into a slight trot, and I gave an embarrassing squeak of pain as his spine jammed upwards through the saddle, before I regained control and bit my lip. The trot had always been my least favorite gait of all, mainly because it involved the horse "bouncing" up and down as they walked, thus vastly increasing the anatomical discomfort for the rider –me– that naturally came with almost-but-not-quite doing the horizontal splits.

 _Fuck you, demon horse, you knew how hard this is for me._ I thought viciously, trying to meet the movements as I had been taught all those years ago, involuntary tears in my eyes. This hurt. As if hearing my thoughts, and definitely hearing my yelp, Dämon tossed his head again to view me with one sardonic eye.

_What's the matter, human? Can't handle a simple trot?_

"I'm going to sell you to make _glue_." I hissed at the demon horse, adjusting my grip and flicking him into a canter. Despite this being a faster pace, there was no bouncing involved, and I let out a quiet sigh of relief (despite my wiser impulses) as his spine stopped meeting my pelvis every other stride. That sound was, of course, his cue to test my boundaries again, and he suddenly bucked, making me lurch forward and nearly break my nose on the back of his head. I mentally screamed curses at him with all my might as I fought him for control, before finally slumping in the saddle as he slowly cantered to a halt, both of us willing to take a brief rest. Then he decided that he wanted to canter again, and push my control for a gallop.

_I swear to god, I'm going to get Sebastian for this if it kills me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 11.38 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: March 23rd, 2016, 1.47 PM USA Central Time


	18. That Butler, Pony Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor disclaimer, I have actually only ridden a horse like twice, so take anything I say with a pinch of salt. Two pairs of cousins on both sides of the family are total horse geeks though, and oddly enough horses get talked about a lot in fantasy books, so that's where I'm drawing my knowledge from. Just to make sure nobody actually believes I'm an expert on the subject. 
> 
> A fan asked about people seeing Arya's scars and Having Concerns in the original posting of this, but that's actually a no. People did things to cause scars back then, and Sebastian confirmed to Ciel that Arya literally fell out of the sky and into the Thames. So they honestly wouldn't care. Ciel might not even notice, because the only visible one would be the cut on her neck, and even then most of the time it would be covered by her dress collar. Remember, people dressed very conservatively back then, and all of the big scars are very near to the center of her body. The only ones that aren't are her fingers, and there were plenty of plausible reasons in the 1880s why someone would lose their fingernails. Remember, nobody makes much of it that Ciel himself has allegedly lost an eye or that Joker and the other circus members had missing limbs. Physical injury was very common back then, especially for the poorer classes who couldn't afford medical care. (Whereas nowadays anybody walking around with half their face missing would be rather suspicious.) 
> 
> Fun fact, selling a horse to "make glue" basically meant that they would be slaughtered and used to make a variety of products, including glue (usually by using the hooves). Culled means killed, usually in reference to domesticated animals. "Place down the way" is a reference to both of these actions. So, you know, there's that. Dämon is also literally German for demon, hence Arya's nickname.

_Arya's POV:_

"…ss."

_Nope, I'm asleep._

"…iss…"

_La la la, I can't hear you~_

"…iss!"

_I'm sorry, but the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected. Please hang up and fuck the fuck off._

"MISS!"

I groaned like a lost soul being dragged, piece by piece, from the grave, pulling my face up from the nice, soft, heavenly cushy pillow. "Mey-rin, what'd I tell you 'bout waking me up?" I slurred as the bright colors of the world busily stabbed into my eyeballs, the blur in front of me resolving into the face of the worried maid.

"It's almost noon, Miss Aryana. You've been asleep since 22.00 yesterday, yes you have." she squeaked worriedly.

Well, that explained why I was so hungry.

"And I'm gonna keep doin' it. Go 'way." I mumbled, pulling the covers up over my head. While doing so I unthinkingly exposed my bruised and battered arms, and heard her gasp. Since I had explained (whined) about the demonic horse I was attempting to ride last night at dinner with the other servants, she luckily didn't immediately assume the worst, but she did continue fluttering over me in concern.

"That's a horribly behaved horse, yes he is!" Mey-rin exclaimed indignantly. "Throwing you off all the time! He should be culled!"

"Horses do that," I groaned sleepily into the pillow, cursing myself for not keeping my own stupid mouth shut. If I'd kept quiet, she might've lost interest and gone away. "They test who's in charge. It's not bad behavior, it's me being an idiot and trying to tackle Mount Everest when I barely know how to climb. You don't let novices ride a horse like that, you let experts. They like the challenge, and the horse likes the contest."

_Though I would not complain if Mister Demon was sold to the place down the way._

"Hmm…" Mey-rin mumbled, her tone clearly letting me know that she did not approve of bucking horses no matter what their motivation was. She then returned to her attempts in getting me to wake up and I resumed cursing Mey-rin to places that good Victorian women were not supposed to be able to reference. "Come along miss, some tea will wake you right up!" she said with false cheer, gently shaking my by the shoulder, and I buried my face in the pillow.

"Go 'way."

"The sun is shining, it's a wonderful day, yes it is!"

"I'm dead."

"Don't take such a somber attitude, come along!"

"I'm deaaad."

"Everything gets better with time, you shouldn't be such a grouch!"

I gritted my teeth and pulled the pillow down around my ears. _"Vaffanculo!"_

"Eh?! That's sounds like Italian, Miss Aryana! What does it mean?"

I admitted defeat and pulled the blankets down from my head, glaring blearily at her. "Just hope you never find out. Also, never say that in the presence of an Italian." I told her groggily, and she blinked twice.

"Eh?" she asked in confusion, and I slowly rolled –literally– out of bed.

"Why 'm I even still asleep? I mean, din' Sebastian or Ciel want me for something?" I asked, rubbing the corner of my eyes, and she shrugged helplessly.

"Mister Sebastian did say something about your French teacher coming in at 14.00."

I struggled to comprehend that for a few moments. "…that's like three in the afternoon in American time, right?" I finally mumbled, and she shifted, counting it all out on her fingers as I slowly sat up, slumped over slightly and trying to muster up the energy to live.

"Actually, it's two, miss." she said apologetically, and I grunted in answer. My body was still sore all over, despite the long night of sleep and a labor-intensive hot soak that I had prior to sleeping. I'd had to carry up multiple cans of boiling water to the tub, which in retrospect had probably not done my sore muscles any favors. (Which was the whole point of the bath in the first place, so yay me for organized thinking after about four hours of being bucked off an equine mass of pure evil.)

"…gimme some of your best gunpowder tea, and I'll see what I can do. " I mumbled as I pulled my hair behind my ears, and she brightened, scampering out of the room. I grabbed a brush and began laboriously raking it through my hair, trying to pummel my thoughts into some kind of order. They formed with glacial slowness as I slowly, creakily got to my feet, starting up my usual exercise routine. Immediately, about six or seven muscle groups screamed in protest, but I gritted my teeth and kept at it, slowly forcing them to respond without cramps. As anybody who did these things regularly knew, when your muscles were sore, the best thing to get them _un_ -sore was to work it off.

Mey-rin scampered back into the room as I was stretching my legs as far as I could, nearly doing the splits, with my elbows and upper arms resting on the wooden floor. "Erm…your tea is ready, Miss Aryana." she said uncertainly, and I looked up as I completed a full split, leaning forward with my weight mainly resting on my upper arms.

"Gimme a sec." I squeaked with tears in my eyes, slowly straightening up and wincing as my inner thighs screamed in protest. "Ow."

"I'm not entirely certain you should be doing that, miss." she said as I got to my feet, taking the tea from her with a murmur of thanks and, after a cautionary sip, downing the entire cup in a few gulps. "It looks painful."

"That's sorta the idea." I said as I shivered slightly, the sugar and caffeine from the deliciously warm tea already taking effect as I handed her back the cup. I carefully bent backwards, placing my hands on the wooden floor, and began to arch my spine. "It's supposed to warm up my muscles and stretch them out, and that hurts." I explained as I stared at the wood, and she squeaked as I made a perfect U with my body, and I held it for a few seconds, before slowly sitting back up and straightening out. I formed a twisty pretzel shape with my arms and pulled, letting out a quiet groan of relief as my aching shoulder muscles were stretched and relaxed.

After I preformed my entire warm-up routine, I moved on to actually working out, building my strength and althetic ability. I would need every last bit I could muster to beat that horse, and besides, a little muscle never hurt anyone.

Mey-rin had left before I had finished warming up, so I was left to do my push-ups, stomach crunches, and sit-ups in peace, without her blushing and averting her eyes from the "indecent" way I was exposing my legs. I didn't see anything wrong with it, I had pants on, and they were even baggy pants to boot. (Since they were old army fatigues from my dad, they were a few sizes too big for me, which was easily remedied by a belt.)

Once I had finally finished with all of my contortions and exercises, I went to the small wardrobe me and Mey-rin were sharing. It was mostly her clothes, at this point, since I had been too exhausted yesterday to do anything but drag my things to our room and collapse on the bed. I pulled out the dress Miss Nina had sewn for horseback riding, because today, the battle of wits between me and Dämon would definitely continue. I shrugged it on and tied my hair back, noticing as I did that I was running out of ponytails.

Yet another reason to figure out how to ride that beast.

For those who wonder, I was still going to carry through with riding Dämon, instead of choosing another horse. Why? Well, for one, just to rub it in Sebastian's face when (if) I finally mastered him. For another, I was just as –if not more– stubborn than he was. Walking away now would mean that I found it too hard, which would mean that Dämon, a _horse_ , had beaten me. I had faced off sociopaths and immortal psychos all by myself: one non-sentient (albeit pure evil) equine was _nothing_ compared to that.

At least in theory. Stupid horse.

I quickly fixed something up for breakfast…er, lunch…um, food…in the kitchen, ignoring Sebastian –who was cleaning up after everyone else's lunch— as he ignored me, bolting down my food as fast as I possibly could to escape his presence. While I was now fairly certain he wouldn't harm me, Sebastian was still scary as hell, pun not intended. I then quickly piled my plates beside the non-clean ones and set out for the outside, threading my way imperfectly through the huge, echoing manor.

After about ten minutes of wandering, I finally found an outside door, and I wrapped the scarf I had borrowed from Mey-rin around my face and set off across the grounds, the powdery snow crunching under my feet as I pulled off my hair tie in retrospect, wanting to keep my ears warm.

It took yet another ten minutes of wandering to find where the stables were, and I cursed the hugeness of Ciel's mansion. Honestly, what was wrong with having a smaller, cozier sort of manor, like the one Britain himself owned and lived in? People could find their way around in those. _I_ could find my way around in those, which had been very lucky for me, because if I hadn't, I might've died. (It's a long story, but briefly imagine being chased around a mansion by a psychopath with magic. Do you want to know where everything is, or do you want to have no freaking clue? I knew where everything was, thus, I survived.)

I sighed in relief at the gust of warm air that rushed out to meet me when I opened the stable door, caused by the body heat of all the various horses within the building, and edged inside, putting my hair up again as I did. I foresaw that it would take a long, long time before I could lure Dämon out of the stables, and I didn't want my hair to get in the way. It'd been growing out lately, since I hadn't had the time or the opportunity to get it cut, and didn't have the skill or the materials to do it myself. It nearly reached past my shoulders.

It took a bit of looking, but I eventually found the stall of my enemy, the spawn of Satan, the most evil equine mass upon this earth, Dämon. He was calmly eating some hay and oats, and looked up as I approached. He whickered and lowered his head again as I grabbed some apples from the nearby barrel, continuing to munch on his foodstuffs. _I bet you're real sore after trying to tangle with me, aren't you, rookie?_

I decided to ignore the fact I was making up speech patterns for his random movements. The horse was a smartass. Case closed.

"Yeah, it's me again. Ready for round two?" I muttered as I grabbed his bit and bridle, glaring at him challengingly. He tossed his steel grey mane and turned his head slightly to look at me with one darkened eye.

 _And just what, **rookie** , are you planning to do with that?_ He seemed to say, and I stuck my tongue out at him. In truth, I was a bit nervous for this part, but I couldn't show that or else I was doomed. Horses could sense weakness, and temperamental ones often took weakness as a sign to misbehave –or bite.

I hopped over the edge of his stall and approached him, and his ears flicked backwards. _Bad sign_. I thought as a hint of sweat gathered on my palms, and I gulped and smiled nervously. "Nice horsie." I squeaked, reaching up to scratch his mane. His ears flicked back further at my movement and for a second I thought he was either going to bite me or rear, but as I began to scratch, they slowly settled upright again.

He grumbled low in his throat and leaned against me as I wheezed and staggered back against the wooden wall, nearly crushing my lungs. Dämon then snorted and tossed his head impatiently as I instantly stopped scratching him in favor of trying to shove him away so I could breathe.

_Did I give you permission to stop, peasant?_

"Well excuse me." I muttered under my breath, continuing to scratch at whatever parts of him seemed itchy as the giant animal resumed leaning against me like a purring, contented cat. Only this "cat" was at least three times my weight, and if he didn't get off of me soon, I was going to pop a lung.

With threats, shoves with my free hand, and muttered curses, I finally seemed to manage to make him understand this, and he leaned away from me as I sucked in a huge, grateful gasp of air. Still scratching, I took the chance offered to me and looped the bridle over his nose, gently pushing the bit at his mouth. Dämon seemed in a cooperative mood after his scratch and let me fit the bit between his teeth before I somewhat hastily withdrew my hand, fitting the rest of the bridle over his head and letting out a sigh of relief when I finally managed it. I had gotten more than my fare share of horse bites when bridling, and I had a funny feeling that Dämon's bite would _hurt_.

I stopped scratching and ignored Dämon's whinny of protest, vaulting back over the stall wall and grabbing his saddle. This time I opened the stall door, mostly because I couldn't lift the saddle over the walls, and quickly grabbed the reins, preparing to drag the stubborn horse out of the stall if it killed me. I was instantly surprised, and instantly suspicious, when Dämon immediately and docilely followed my tug on the reins, clopping along behind me until I got to one of the tying posts and knotted the reins around it. I eyed him warily as I edged around his body to get the saddle, and he stared at me with one innocent black eye.

 _I ,strong >can behave myself, you know._

"Whatever you say, hoss." I muttered under my breath, throwing the saddle over his back. He curveted slightly at the sudden movement and weight, and I gulped, quickly fishing in my pocket for an apple and handing it to Dämon to keep him occupied. He took it and began crunching energetically, once more a calm and docile beast. Supposedly.

He turned one black eye to watch me as I grabbed the straps, shifting a little bit until I turned my head and glared at him. Clearly, he would only be calm and obedient when I proved to him that I actually knew what I was doing; I'd proved that I knew how to handle him, if only slightly, so he went along with my plans, for now.

The emphasis on the "for now" part was pretty obvious.

I sighed and yanked the girth tight, then noticed that he had taken in a deep breath. I glared at Dämon and kneed his belly –as a 900 pound animal, it didn't hurt him one little bit, but he _did_ blow out the air in his lungs, leaving the girth strap several sizes too loose.

"So, you're one of _those_ horses." I muttered as I yanked the strap properly tight, hearing him whicker in amusement. Some horses would intentionally take and hold deep breathes before they were saddled, which would make the saddle a lot looser and more comfortable for them when they started breathing normally again. Unfortunately, since the strap holding the saddle down wasn't tight, it also made the saddle loose and liable to dump the rider, which was why most horses were trained out of doing it. Dämon, being a noble's horse, had _also_ probably been trained not to do that, but, like most horses, he was pretty smart and knew exactly what he could or could not get away with. He would never have pulled these hijinks with an experienced rider, the kind that would usually handle him, but then again, I wasn't an experienced rider.

I jerked all of the various straps, making sure they were good, before undoing the knot on the reins and starting to lead him outside. Dämon dragged his hooves for a few steps, just to see what I would do, and I gave a firm jerk on the reins. "I'm out of practice, not an idiot." I sneered over my shoulder, and he blew a wad of spit onto my dress.

 _Bite me, small human._

"I have more apples, you know, and you ain't getting them unless you play nice." I told him, and his ears pricked up at the word "apple".

 _You have my full attention, oh most wonderful and worshipful master._

"Suck-up."

_You're the one resorting to bribery._

"Shut it."

_I'm a horse, oh most clueless human. I haven't said anything._

__

_***Time Skip***_

_"Recht! Recht!"_

Dämon whirled to his right as I nudged him with the reins, and despite my throbbing muscles, I felt a thrill of adrenaline and joy. He was actually obeying simple commands now, most of the time, although he still occasionally fought me for dominance. He'd thrown me several times today during those spats, but he didn't duck away so often when I grabbed for the reins, and he hadn't bucked me off once. With the help of apples, curse words, and mental power, we were improving, slowly but surely. It probably wouldn't be more than a few weeks before I could trust him on an open trail.

I tugged hard on the reins, slowing him down, as we approached the stables. I'd figured out early on that he had a hard mouth, so luckily I hadn't hurt him when I sawed back full-force on the reins those first few times. I had also inadvertently discovered –when I fell off and began cursing him– that Dämon responded better when I spoke in German instead of English. Go figure. I guess ancestral surroundings and training had carried over, even when he was moved to England.

 _"You'd probably accept bribes of beer instead of apples, wouldn't you?"_ I mumbled, remembering Germany and Prussia from the world of _Hetalia_ , and Dämon's ears flicked backwards to hear the German I spoke. He whinnied and shook his mane, although I couldn't tell if it was agreement or derision. I grinned slightly. "Well, you're a nice horse anyway." I said, reaching forward to scratch behind his ears. "You just have to remember it."

He promptly neighed and bucked me off into the mud.

Something poetic about trusting to soon in that, I figured.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 11.49 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: April 7th, 2016, 12.17 PM USA Central Time


	19. That Butler, Sneaking Feeling

_Arya's POV:_

With a dull and pounding head, I shuffled through the books in Ciel's library, mindlessly sorting out the French from the Latin, Greek, and who-knew-what-the-hell-else. After Dämon had thrown me for the umpteenth time and gotten mud all over my dress, I had barely had the time to run back upstairs, change, shove my dirty dress into Mey-rin's hands, and streak back downstairs to meet my French teacher, who made her opinion on my being late quite clear throughout our long, excruciating session of pronunciation and grammar. I hadn't realized how lucky I was, when learning German and Italian, that I had the actual countries themselves teaching me: they made everything seem so _simple_.

After multiple hours of trying to pummel my brain into any kind of complacency and relying heavily on that little extra sharpness the pixies had granted me –I swore I was going to feed them a cake made of pure sugar by the time this was through– Madame Dufour finally dismissed me and I had staggered back towards the kitchen and eaten whatever concoction Sebastian had cooked up for the servants, before trying my best to ignore my developing migraine and slouching back up to the library to sort out the books I knew would have _something_ on magic, bringing my journal along with in case the need to take notes would arise.

And so here I was. Occasionally I'd flick open a volume and page through it, trying to find out the subject so I could decide whether or not I'd actually need it, but at the moment I was mainly just trying not to fall over and die. And focus at the same time. Meh.

_Clunk._

__

_***Time Skip***_

_Creeeeeeeeaaaaak…_

"…zzz-!"

I jerked awake at the slow groan of wood on wood and blinked groggily, realizing that I had fallen asleep at the table in a most uncomfortable position, my chin tucked over one folded arm and the other stretched out across the table, my cheek uncomfortably resting against some 15th-century jerkface's idea of leather binding and my journal a few inches from falling over the edge of the table. The room was dark and I vainly sought to discern what the creaking noise had come from, my hand sneakily sliding down to my hip, where my Colt was holstered.

"Sebastian?" I asked aloud, hiding my nervousness and hoping that this was just his idea of a joke. Or prank. Or whatever.

No answer.

I shoved the chair back with my knees, coming to my feet and whirling at the same time as I yanked my Colt out. The heavy wooden chair crashed back onto the floor with a loud _bang_ as I aimed the gun towards an empire library, my heart pounding in my chest.

Nothing.

,em>Okay, it's an old house. It creaks, it shifts, that's a basic rule of physics and architecture. I thought to myself, my heart pounding against my ribs as my hands trembled ever so slightly. _That noise you heard was probably nothing. It was almost certainly nothing. If it wasn't nothing it was someone closing the door that you forgot to close. If it wasn't that it was Sebastian being an asshole._

The mental litany didn't help. My nerves were jumping all over the place and despite my logical reassurances, every muscle in my body was tense, fully expecting to be hexed or stabbed at any given moment. My mind was vibrating between fight and flight and despite my finger on the trigger of the Colt my brain was shrieking at me that flight was currently the better of the two options. I didn't even know what I was so scared of, all I knew was that something _wasn't right_ here, and the only "not right" I knew of –Ciel hadn't left for the circus yet and Lizzy wasn't staying over– was someone whom I would willingly stab out my own eyes rather than meet again.

"…liv…"

I swallowed hard and licked my lips, my voice a thin, squeaky, humiliating thread of its former self.

"…Oliver?" I whispered hoarsely to the darkness, my whole body tensing up.

No answ-

Handonmyshoulderholy _fuck!_

A shriek froze in my throat as I slammed my foot back and whirled, firing upon sight.

**BANG!**

I stared at the man standing before me, my nerves calming down slightly, although my body was still quivering as the candles on the far wall flared up. He was probably going to kill me for this, although to be honest it would be an extreme improvement over _him._

"Boy am I glad to see you."

Sebastian, blood trailing down his throat from a hole somewhere under his chin, gave me a deeply unamused look before he turned and spat out a mangled, blood-soaked bullet onto the floorboards. "I must congratulate you on your aim, Miss Thompson. Anyone else would have been killed." he said as he looked at me again and wiped a small trickle of blood from his lips with his thumb. "But a Phantomhive butler-"

 _"Could of course survive a gunshot of this magnitude_ or something stupid like that, yadda yadda yadda. I get it." I said grumpily, storing my Colt back in its holster. "You must'a knocked thirty years off my life with that little stunt of yours. Why didn't you respond when I asked if it was you?"

Sebastian flourished his silver pocketwatch with a slight, smug smirk. "Your official curfew was several hours ago, Miss Thompson. What were you still doing up?" he asked me sweetly, and I glared at him, rubbing the drowsiness out of the corner of one eye.

"I was sleeping." I muttered as I grabbed my journal from the table, then folded my hands in prayer position over my nose and took a few deep breathes, trying to calm my racing pulse. "Do me a favor Jeeves; dangle me over hot chimneys, use me for target practice, play a thousand and one petty pranks and tricks, but don't ever, _ever_ sneak up on me again."

Sebastian raised one perfectly groomed black eyebrow at me. "Would this have anything to do with the "Oliver" you spoke of?" he asked, a slight undertone of wicked humor in his voice. He had seen me freak out, after all, and, presumably like any demon from this world, seeing a vulnerable magician was _hilarious_ to him.

I did not bother to respond, instead increasing the intensity of my glare. His lips twitched slightly in what I knew would have been a smirk if he hadn't been such a well-mannered butler, and he bowed, gesturing towards the door. "If I may escort you to your rooms?"

"Do I get a choice?" I muttered under my breath, stalking past him in ill humor with my journal tucked under my arm.

"I could drag you." he offered quietly from behind me, and I didn't need eyes in the back of my head to know that he was once more smiling as angelically as a man could smile.

_Demonic bastard. I thought we had a truce going._

_3rd Person POV:_

"So?" Ciel asked Sebastian expectantly, holding out his arms as he stared into the mirror before him. The demonic butler was currently preparing him for bed, and Ciel stood patiently as Sebastian helped him into his nightshirt.

"She is indeed a novice, as far as I can tell." the butler said after a few moments, buttoning up his collar. "Most magicians would probe the area or attack with magic if they felt uneasy: Miss Thompson reached for a gun."

Ciel felt a brief twinge of surprise as he untied his eyepatch on his own, revealing his Faustian contract. "She has a gun?" he muttered as he placed it on the side table for the next day.

"A Colt Single-Action revolver, popular with the American army." Sebastian elaborated as he turned back the covers. "Her aim with it at close range is impeccable, however I doubt that she has been using it as a personal weapon for very long."

"How so?"

"Her grip is inexperienced, although technically correct, and I doubt she would have any accuracy beyond point-blank range. Given her comments about living with a militaristic benefactor, we can assume that is where she learned." the demon answered blandly, refilling the water jug.

"Hmm." Ciel clicked his tongue thoughtfully as he climbed into bed. "It's interesting that she fired without waiting to see if you were an enemy or not. While it could have been excused on the basis that any normal person would have revealed themselves at the sight of the gun, the possibility exists that she would have killed you had you been anyone else."

Sebastian handed him his bedtime tea (cavities and insomnia be damned, Ciel liked his tea and would have it whenever he damn well pleased), and he took a sip. Ceylon.

"Combining all this evidence with the fact she mentioned an "Oliver" in connection to an overt mental threat, it seems obvious that she has had some kind of inimical experience with the supernatural in her so-called previous world. We can use that." he finished with a content sigh, pleased with his ability to deduct.

"It is equally possible that this "Oliver" was another magician, my lord." Sebastian observed diffidently from beside the bed, holding out the tea tray as per his duties. "From my knowledge, magicians often squabble amongst themselves, and Oliver is an English name."

"Well, it's mostly irrelevant anyway." Ciel said peevishly, handing Sebastian the empty cup. "What I want to know is this: is she or is she not a threat?"

Sebastian placed the tea cup on the tray before answering. "It is my sincere belief, young lord, that she will not seek to harm us unless we threaten her first. Her main focus is to return to her proper plane of existence and she will need the financial and political support of a noble to reach the necessary level of learning. If we are placed in a compromising situation, she will almost certainly take our side out of sheer familiarity, if nothing else."

Ciel smirked. "Well then. A magician will be a useful thing to have as the Queen's Guard Dog, won't it?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 12.27 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: May 20th, 2016, 1.00 PM USA Central Time


	20. That Butler, London (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who haven't read the prior fic, Oliver Kirkland is the name of Britain's (Arya's teacher) evil alter ego, who has many of Britain's powers and appears physically similar. He and Arya became nemesis's (What's the plural of nemesis? I wonder.) when she foiled his plot to take over her teacher, Britain, and she was imprisoned and tortured by him several times. (He's the indirect cause of almost all of her scars, and the direct cause of her lost fingernails.) He and his allies were banished to a far-off dimension at the end of the fic, although it is an assumed possibility that he may be able to eventually return in a few hundred/thousand years with his magic. Since he is an infinitely stronger magician than Arya, as well as a cannibal, expert poisoner, and psychopath, one of Arya's biggest fears is him showing up while she is still alive. The fact that as a personification of a country she would be unable to kill him (and he's supernaturally strong because of his status) is also not exactly helpful. 
> 
> Also, about Arya's threat to Dämon, for a very long time in history animals were considered as little more than mindless meat-puppets incapable of actually feeling pain. Thusly animal abuse was traditionally nonexistent, since animals were not "mentally capable" of suffering. This is of course ridiculous, but hey, a lot of things back then were. 
> 
> Speaking of, despite the seeming smallness of the number, Arya's salary is actually worth roughly £1,200 in modern British pounds –money was worth a lot more back then. There's also an Easter egg in Arya's shopping list. I hope it isn't too obvious.

_Arya's POV:_

"Alright you equine fucker." I snarled, holding Dämon tightly by the bridle as he whinnied innocently and shook his head the tiniest bit. "Let's get one thing straight. I have been bucked from here to kingdom come by your antics and I am not gonna stand for it any longer. You listen to me or I am gonna learn you a thing in _pre-Enlightenment animal cruelty_."

Dämon snorted thoughtfully and pawed at the ground with a hoof as I blew a strand of hair out of my face and waited for him to respond. I'd been doing this for almost a solid month, and had to re-commission another horse-riding dress from Miss Nina because _someone_ wore out my first one until it literally looked like mud-covered rags. Enough was enough. Confrontation was warranted.

Dämon finally whickered low in his throat and lipped at my hand, and I sighed and scratched between his ears. _"Come on, you should trust me by now. I'm a good rider, aren't I?"_ I murmured coaxingly in German, and he butted his forehead against my chest. After multiple weeks of proving my stubbornness, intelligence, and practical skullduggery, we had somewhat reached a mutual understanding.

I slowly grabbed the reins and stretched my foot out behind me, waiting for the snort of disapproval. I had gotten permission from Ciel to ride Dämon into London today, so now the only thing to do was actually convince the horse and then go. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy…in theory. Just because he had become marginally more tractable in these past few weeks didn't mean that Dämon would actually listen to me.

However, when I tugged on the reins and slid the rest of my body backwards to rest on my foot, he followed somewhat eagerly, and I grabbed the strap of the rucksack Ciel had given me –tied around my back alongside my apocalypse bag– and pulled the buckle tight with my teeth, my right hand currently occupied with Dämon's reins. I had £20 in small bills –my monthly salary– inside the sack, my hair was tied back, and I was wearing my snuggly warm Russian coat. All in all, I was completely prepared for an outing to London.

I'd have to stay over a couple nights, which I could tell Ciel was slightly unhappy about, but there wasn't much he could do about it, short of asking Sebastian to tail me. This would be something of a test on their part, to see if I conducted myself properly in the absence of Mister Tall, Dark, and Demonic.

Swinging my leg over Dämon's back, I looked up at the cold, grey sky. Despite the fact that it was now tending towards the end of January, the snow on the ground had already mostly melted, although the mud occasionally re-froze on the chillier days, which made for hard, painful ground. Luckily today was one of the wetter days, although still fully as cold as British springtime could get, and I ran over my mental list again as I kicked Dämon into a canter and we shot off across the grounds.

_A hat or earmuffs for winter, warm gloves, something to tie my hair with, books on magic, a haircut. Buy more ammunition for the Colt, see about martial artist or combat instructors. Renew and replace non-perishables in apocalypse bag. A better knife and sheath for self defense and survival needs…_

I'd have to see about taking fencing lessons with Ciel or Sebastian. Or someone else. Preferably someone else. While they were completely awesome and entertaining to watch when one was safely separated by reality and a computer screen, Ciel was unsettling and Sebastian was terrifying to deal with in real life. Despite the fact that I technically was under Ciel's employ and lived in the same mansion, I tried to avoid him and dearest darling-est Bassy as much as possible.

_Which reminds me…_

As far as I knew, Grell wasn't going to show up until the _Campania_ arc, which happened sometime vaguely before summer. I was somewhat grateful for that, as it was exceedingly hard to deal with him even when he was a fictional character and now that I would actually be able to interact with him, he would most likely become impossible. I'd never really seen Grell interact with a female besides Madame Red (whom I most assuredly did not want to end up like, thank you very much), but with his penchant for being off-the-cuff, anything between bitter animosity and outright BFF-attempts was possible. Trying to plan out all the possibilities that spun off how he dealt with me and I dealt with him and Sebastian and Ciel's attitude on me dealing with him and him dealing with me…it gave me a major headache.

Planning for ever contingency was tiring in this verse.

_***Time Skip***_

"A'right, so you just, um, like, stay here." I said awkwardly, leading Dämon into the stable of Ciel's townhouse and closing the stall behind us.

He whinnied and eyed the wooden door contemplatively as I loosened the saddle girths, as if debating whether or not it would hold up to his strength if he decided to kick it down and go galloping across the London streets.

I glared at him and jerked on his reins. _"Behave, or no more apples."_ I told him in German, and he snorted incredulously and bent his head, starting to munch on the hay that came free with the stall.

_How dare you imply that I, the horse of a nobleman, would be so lowly as to go gallivanting across some stupid city. The nerve of some people. My honor has been smirched beyond repair._

"Yeah, yeah. Sass mouth." I muttered under my breath, giving him a scratch behind the ears as he pawed his hoof against the cobblestones. Soma and Agni has been happy to see me, at least, and Agni had handed me a helpful list of directions towards all the various establishments I'd need to visit before I'd led Dämon down to the stables.

"Behave now, y'hear?" I called to Dämon as I left the stall, and he whickered in return.

I ducked into the small room beside the stables –I didn't know nor care what it was for– and took off my coat, hanging it and my bags by the door. My dress was already more or less free of wrinkles, so I didn't have to worry about brushing it down too much. Kicking my foot up on the tiny desk, I tightened the laces on my boots, and pushed down the small pocketknife tucked near the brim of the left one. I carefully adjusted the strap and holster for my Colt, which I planned to wear under my nice warm coat, and fingered the meager few rounds of ammunition I had. The person who'd originally given me the gun hadn't exactly given it to me with self-defense in mind, and the few ammunition rounds I had were given to me more out of "hey, if you wanna fire this old-fashioned gun, here's some bullets to show off to your friends" then for actual combat.

Oh well. There were enough for just about anything short of supernatural attack and/or a prolonged melee battle.

I twitched my collar straight, plunked on the stupid straw hat, and buttoned my coat back up, swinging the shopping bag that Agni had given me over my shoulder.

I was as ready as I'd ever be.

Waving goodbye to Soma and Agni, who were lurking about near one of the upstairs windows, and receiving a cheery farewell in return, I pulled out my list of directions as I stepped onto the London street. I was immediately assailed by the hustle and bustle of the other people around me, and tightened my fingers around the scrap of paper, glancing up at the street sign before looking back down at the paper and hanging a right. The sidewalk was pretty crowded, as Ciel's, or rather the Phantomhive family's, townhouse was right in the middle of an extremely posh neighborhood and the straight (but not necessarily wide) street was covered in horse-drawn carriages with various levels of ornateness and wealth. It was a better sort of crowded than certain other areas of London, wherein I'd have to keep a tight grip on my things for a very different reason indeed.

Drawing closer to the wrought-iron railings at the side of the cobblestone path as I continued to walk, I flipped Agni's directions over to look at the list he'd written down in a careful, but clearly English-inexperienced scrawl.

> `Shopping List:`
> 
> `Hopkins Tailor Shop (Hat & Mittens.)`
> 
> `Covent Garden Market (Foodstuffs)`
> 
> `Gifford's London Emporium (Hunting Knife & Bullets)`
> 
> `Dunstan's Barber Shoppe (Haircut)`

I flipped it over again to look at the directions, scanning down to the street names by reflex before remembering that a GPS system was still several hundred years into the future.

> `(Hopkins Tailor Shop) 783 Saville Row`
> 
> `(Convent Garden Market) Covent Garden Square`
> 
> `(Gifford's London Emporium) 249 Maiden Avenue`
> 
> `(Dunstan's Barber Shoppe) 186 Fleet Street`

I sighed, read over the directions to Miss Nina's shop again, then tucked the paper inside my pocket and picked up the pace. I hadn't really known to to frame the "I need books on magic" request to Agni, so I was missing a very important part of my list. I'd _planned_ to visit a book store sometime during my stay in London, but it looked as if I was going to have to search it out myself. Oh well.

Despite how I would normally find people-watching an at least slightly creepy activity, I was actually having quite a bit of fun doing it here. Because, I mean, exactly how many people still living could say that they saw and walked along an authentic 19th-century London street with actual 19th-century people in the actual 19th century? I was watching history and doing something no still-living person had done in my world. Or rather my time. Eh, either way, I was still majorly geeking out. The accents, the clothing, even the atmosphere, all of it was at least slightly, if not majorly, different than the London I had visited with my magic teacher.

At least most of the streets were the same. Thank god for Europeans and their history-preserved-ness: even some hundred and fifty years in the future, I'd been able to walk along the same basic layout, if highly modernized and much less cramped.

I snarled something Italian and unflattering under my breath as another dude in a hurry nearly knocked me down, tightening my grip on my bag and directions and slanting my body as far away from the crowd as I could without getting pushed into the carriage-crowded street.

Yes, much less cramped.

_***Time Skip***_

I looked up from the paper Agni had written out, seeing a neat, prim-looking shop with several suits hanging up in the front window, protected from robbery by an ornate iron fence. _Hopkins, The Tailor_ was written in two lines of fancy black scrollwork on the glass, and I walked around the showroom window to the right side of the shop, where the door was. Opening it, I was greeted by the sight of a cramped but tidy room, with many swatches of fabric folded up on high shelves and neatly pressed clothing hung up on folding screens.

"Welcome to-"

"-the Hopkins's Tailor Shop!"

I jumped as I was suddenly –and glamorously– confronted by two women, both of whom bore an uncanny resemblance to WW1-era pinup girls, or something straight out of the pages of a Roaring Twenties advertisement. One even had the flapper haircut and everything.

_Man, Nina doesn't even know how "ahead of the times" she is…_

I smiled awkwardly. "Er…hi…I need some mittens and a hat for winter weather, and I've come here before for wardrobe, so…"

I trailed off uncertainly. Ah, social anxiety, how I have missed thee, how thine return at an inopportune time sucks ass.

Luckily, I wasn't left to wallow in awkwardness for very long. A door from farther inside the shop slammed open, and Nina whirled through the gap, eyes sparkling and several tape measures hanging from her shoulders. "Meg! Augusta! I heard the bell ring, do we have a customer?!"

The now-named assistants split to the side and gestured to me as I flinched and squeaked, waving awkwardly. "Erm, uh, hi again…"

Nina's eyes gleamed and she grabbed my hands with such enthusiasm she almost cut off my circulation. "Ah, Miss Thompson! Welcome to my humble shop!" she squealed, and I offered a hesitant smile.

"Uh, yeah, sure." I agreed, then yanked one of my numb hands free and fished around in my pocket for my shopping list. "So, not to be rude or anything, but it's freezing around here. I need a winter hat, some gloves, and maybe a scarf?"

Nina pouted. "Goodness, such a trifling request." she sighed, then snapped her fingers briskly, grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me off into the interior of the shop as her assistants began to scurry about the shop, apparently taking care of other orders.

"And how are things for a fellow woman in the world of business?" she asked brightly as she began digging through an extensive collection of fabric, and I watched the variously-colored pieces fly everywhere behind her, hypnotized. I began to wonder just how her shop managed to stay in any kind of pristine shape.

"I've, uh, been doing fine I guess. Lots of accounting n' stuff."

"Wonderful!" Miss Nina flourished a sheet of orange fabric at me. "I don't have any hats in stock, but I can whip up a lovely scarf~! My assistants should be gathering up some gloves for you to try on as soon as they finish with orders." she said happily, laying the fabric on a sewing table and whipping her scissors across it in a blur. I blinked as she began tucking and folding and running the fabric under a old-timey sewing machine, humming to herself as she did.

"You may not know this, but it's not very common for us English to wear hats in winter. Snoods and capes typically do the trick." she told me absently, breaking off from her humming.

"Oh…gotcha." I replied after a beat, blinking a few times as I mentally screamed to myself _What in the name of all things freakish and unholy is a snood?!_

"I guess I can just use the scarf as double-duty." I added, scratching my cheek nervously.

She beamed at me and whipped the now-finished scarf out from under her machine. _"Viola!_ Here you are! Try it on and I'll go see about the gloves."

Miss Nina stuffed the scarf in my hands and bustled out the door before I could get a word in edgewise, and I shrugged to myself, holding the length of orange fabric up and inspecting it. From what I could feel, it was warm and soft, and I wrapped it twice around my neck and flipped the ends over my shoulders. I then beamed and snuggled my chin into the fabric. _Hmm. Nice. I feel warmer already._

__

_***Time Skip***_

Miss Nina had apparently refused to take payment from me due to the fact I was a Phantomhive employee –she'd take it out of Ciel's tab, which I wasn't sure he would be altogether pleased about. Then again, a scarf and a pair of warm gloves –black wool with fluffy stuff inside– weren't exactly high-cost items, and he was a _very_ high-ranking nobleman. He probably wouldn't even notice if he wasn't such a micro-manager.

Seriously, after living in the same house for a couple weeks, it was _no_ stretch at _all_ to imagine he could run his own business. That little brat had a method and schedule for every last second of his day, and although he did technically rely on Sebastian to make sure it ran smoothly, he'd still created the system himself and fully kept track of it.

 _Come children, let us repeat the mantra for protecting our egos. I refuse to accept that a twelve-year-old is smarter than me. I refuse to accept that a twelve-year-old is smarter than me. I refuse to accept that a twelve-year-old is smarter than me._

_(Even though he is. Even though he is.)_

I groaned to myself, running a hand down my face and then frantically cursing as the carriage I had "hitched a ride" on hit a rut, and the whole contraption bounced like a trampoline as I desperately dropped my hand and clung onto the thin margin at the back, which was where an enterprising individual (like myself) could perch and ride upon the carriage without paying the quite frankly outrageous travel fee. I'd read about the trick in _Vampire Plagues: London, 1850_ , which is a lovely book about ancient Mayan curses and an apocalypse of vampires and smart-mouthed English Cockney pickpockets (from whom I had learned the carriage trick), the equally good sequels being _Paris, 1850_ and _Mexico, 1850._

What the book hadn't mentioned was the weird or disapproving looks the hitchhiker would get from the pedestrian populace, although that may have been due to the fact I'd hiked my dress up to my calves to prevent it getting caught in the back wheels and my bag kept bouncing awkwardly on my shoulder. Or the fact that I was technically breaking a law/rule by hanging onto the back of the carriage without paying the driver any money.

Screw them, for all they knew I'd paid and just enjoyed hanging off the back like this.

I flicked out my shopping list from inside my dress and squinted at the street sign as the carriage turned a corner, bracing myself against the thin lip of wood so that I wouldn't fall off. It seemed as if my destination –Covent Garden Square and Market– was only a few streets away, and so with no little amount of relief, I stuffed the paper back into my dress, bunched it up in my hands, and scooted/leaped off the rattling carriage, stumbling a little at the contrast in speeds as I hit the ground. The very instant I recovered my balance I bolted to the side of the street and shoved my way onto the pavement, barely missing being hit by several other carriages as I did so.

 _Jaywalking has never been so eventful._

I brushed down the front of my dress, gave the people staring at me in horror a cheerful smile, and sauntered off down the street, hoisting my bag up a little higher on my shoulder as I did so. I didn't see what a _market_ might have for non-perishable food items, but it was always worth checking out. Granted, I hadn't needed to use any of the cans of soup or biscuits or bottled water that I had (yet), but still, it never hurt to prepare, and I knew the biscuits at least were _definitely_ starting to go stale. I could probably hammer nails with them if I tried hard enough.

I made a face as I rounded a corner and came out into the square, seeing the large crowd gathered around the various stalls of produce –definitely nothing that would go into my bag and not start rotting within a week. It was actually a bit jarring to see, as my magic teacher had taken me to the modern Covent Garden Square before, and I hadn't expected to see it more or less the same, if not much dingier and crowded.

The market itself was centered inside a large building –which I had definitely not expected to be already built– and anyone who wanted to sell anything had set up stalls inside and around it: those fortunate (and wealthy) enough to buy or rent the rooms inside the building had tiny, open-front shops.

Still though, I tightened my grip on my bag and plunged into the crowd, keeping a wary eye out for pickpockets. I didn't know which districts were the which as far as crime (except for Soho and Whitechapel, both places to be avoided in the 19th and for all I knew the 21st century), so I wasn't sure that, if I did catch a pickpocket trying to steal my loose change, a policeman might actually come to take care of the situation or just ignore whatever wasn't a shout of murder. Crime enforcement was pretty lax in most areas of this era, part of the reason Jack the Ripper (in both verses) had been able to so easily do his work.

That and I was also uncertain of whether or not I _could_ actually beat up any wayward street urchins trying to steal my stuff. They usually worked in groups, and while I could probably fend off one or two without too much force, if I was mobbed, I wasn't sure whether or not I'd end up accidentally hospitalizing them. And since none of the street rats in London had any money to pay for food, much less a doctor's bill –thus the reason that they were picking pockets– broken bones would probably end up being a death sentence.

So no, I didn't want to get into any fights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 12.45 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 7th, 2016, USA Central Time


	21. That Butler, London (Part 2)

_Arya's POV:_

_Well, that was a waste of time._ I thought irritably, shouldering my bag as I stalked through the streets. Like I had suspected, all of the foodstuffs in the market were fruits, vegetables, and meat, various things that would turn rancid and rotten within less than a week, even inside my infinitely-expanded apocalypse bag. I had managed to snag a few rolls of hard bread, which would last a lot longer, but were still probably a bad idea to leave in my bag for too long.

I let out a long, drawn-out sigh as I pushed open the door to the weapons shop, letting out a shiver of relief at the gust of warm air. The sun was starting to set, even though it was probably only around three or four in the afternoon, and the wintery air in London was consequently getting even more chilly. The scarf Miss Nina had given me was a big help though, likewise the warm, wool-lined mittens.

The shop was exceedingly interesting. It was small, and cramped, like most European buildings, and largely made of wood, with counters and tables packed closely against the walls and each other. Light spilled from a few lanterns hung from the low ceiling, offering a counter to the rapidly setting sun. Knives, guns, and swords were hung everywhere, ranging from the mundane to the exotic, and I realized with interest that this definitely wasn't an average dealer. A lot of the weapons here were worth serious money, probably worth a fortune to the lower classes, and sadly, not a lot of shopkeepers in this era could afford alternative methods of lighting. When the sun went down, they closed up shop.

Luckily for me, I was not only employed by a nobleman, but I was a member of the upper-middle class –in this verse– in my own right, and could afford the products here.

Like most other shops in this day and age, I was welcome to pick up whatever I wanted, inspect it, and maybe even make a few passes with it before I went to the counter to buy. I ignored the guns and swords –my Colt was a familiar weapon, and I likely wouldn't be able to get anything more modern than it here, and although having a sword was _tempting_ , since I didn't know how to _use_ one it'd be a waste of money– and instead focused on the knives. I already had one for fighting, my Japanese single-edged _tanto_ , but it was thin and a bit…fragile, for any kind of extended dueling and/or survivalist needs. I needed something with a bit more substance.

I picked up a machete and swung it around for a few seconds, then made a face and put it down again. _Too long._

I spotted a neatly stacked pile of boxes –each about the size of a small, travel-sized paperback– and walked over, seeing that they were, as I had suspected, boxes of ammunition. My Colt took .45 rounds and nothing bigger, and I shuffled through the boxes, looking for the appropriate label. Given my apparent tendency to become a magnet for trouble, I figured that it'd be best for me to take as many boxes of ammo as possible.

I found six and quickly stacked them up in my arms –years of excessive library-frequenting had given me a lot of practice in balancing square objects– and strolled over to the counter. The middle-aged man behind it was comfortably rounded and had a neatly trimmed black beard, which I had expected. Someone who ran a shop like this wasn't going to be sleazy or slack.

"Six boxes of .45 ammunition, and d'you have any hunting or survival knives I could buy?" I asked briskly, and he looked up. There was the expected double-take at a woman doing…well, anything, but he recovered quickly. A sale was a sale, after all.

"We have some." he replied simply, with a faint accent that I couldn't place –something Eastern-European– and stood up, revealing a utilitarian suit in some kind of dark, tough material, much less ornate than Ciel's and much simpler than Sebastian's. As for me, I was wearing one of the business dresses Miss Nina had sewn for me under my tan winter coat, dark green and with a lot less frills and lace than one of of the more formal ones. I'd kept the bright orange scarf and dark brown mittens on for purposes of warmth, and I knew I looked prosperous, at the very least, and wealthy at the very best. After all, Ciel had all _his_ clothing sewn by Miss Nina too.

The shopkeeper pulled a long, low box out from underneath one of the tables and laid it on the counter, pulling the top off to reveal a neat row of large hunting knives, gleaming dully in the light of the lanterns, their sheaths laid straight beside them. They were all roughly six or seven inches long, the blades slightly curved. Some had serrated edges, others had odd, rounded points. I vaguely remembered that rounded tips were sometimes put on hunting knives to avoid the hunter ripping the hide of the animals he skinned.

I, however, was looking for something else: any traditionally-shaped knife that I could comfortably wield, with a crosspiece. If and when I ever needed to use a knife in self defense, it needed to be heavy enough that I could actually cause damage with my somewhat lackluster ability to swing a blade –which a pocketknife or a folding knife wouldn't be able to do– and a crosspiece (the two small arms above the handle that turned a blade from a stick into a T) was to protect my fingers from anyone who attempted to strike me back, their knife hitting the blade of my knife and then sliding down –where, without the crosspiece, they would promptly cut my fingers off.

And, of course, I wanted the knife to be sharp.

I picked up a small black Bowie knife. The blade was slightly curved and about the length of my elbow to my wrist. I touched the edge with my thumb and discovered that yes, it was sharp, and licked the blood away before looking up at the shopkeeper. "How much is this?" I asked politely, and he plucked the sheath from the box before closing it and replacing it beneath the table.

"Five pounds." he said carefully, and I nodded and dug the money out of my bag, before stuffing the sheathed knife into an outside pocket and slinging it over my shoulder.

"Thank you!" I told him cheerfully, before I swung the slightly creaky door shut behind me and turned into the street. The frigid wind instantly struck me with enough force to make my eyes water, bringing with it the scent of snow and melting ice, and I quickly buried my nose in my scarf, shivering hard. My last destination was nearly halfway across town, and the thought of walking there in this cold made my cringe. So I did what any cityslicker would do.

Putting my fingers to my mouth, I gave the loudest, most piercing whistle that I could muster –which, I'll admit with some pride, was quite loud.

"HEY! TAXI!"

It occurred to me a few seconds later that the colloquial term "taxi" may not be in use yet, or at least not in use in England, even though they had horse-drawn carriages that served the same purpose. I was about to draw breath for another shout, reworded, but then I saw one of the two-wheeled carriages traveling towards me. Apparently the terminology was not important; it was the whistle and the shout that did it.

Most probably the whistle.

"I'd like transportation to Fleet Street, _s'il vous plaît."_ I told the driver as I preemptively grabbed the handle to haul myself in. The driver, who looked to be nothing more than a large bundle of insulating fabric and mittens, nodded a few times with his breath steaming in the air before him.

"Five bob, an' I'll get you there afore dark." he said briskly with an indescribably thick Cockney accent, and I stared blankly at him for a few seconds. My time with Britain had taught me a few of the English people's slang terms –especially curse words– so I could vaguely understand what he'd said, but my money terminology was a bit off. I thought for a few seconds as the cold bit into my nose and ears and probed at the edges of my coat. Considering how money seemed to be worth a lot more in this day and age, I figured that "five bob" was probably something below a single pound in value.

I quickly fished some coins out of my pocket and stirred them around, looking for the ten-pence denominations. Shoving them into his hand, I clambered up into the hansom, settling my skirts around me as I sat down. I was actually getting pretty used to wearing dresses with such long skirts and bits of lace and ruffles everywhere, insofar as to the fact that I didn't get anything caught anywhere anymore, and I could usually move around and settle my clothing fairly easily. Nothing within the power of this world could convince me to wear a corset or any of their other unnecessarily complicated undergarments, though.

The hansom jerked slightly as the driver flicked his whip at the horse and it jolted into motion, and since he hadn't corrected me for the amount I'd paid him, I was assuming I'd gotten it right.

Either that or I had overpaid him by a lot and he was just counting it as a tip.

Wrapping my scarf more securely around my face and my quickly-freezing ears, I opened the rucksack Ciel had lent me and began fishing around inside it. My brand-new Bowie knife was safely tucked in its sheath, with included a convenient loop of leather, and I spared a moment to strap it around my leg, the knife laying against the outside of my upper thigh and more or less invisible under the ruffled dress I was wearing. I'd have to ask Miss Nina about putting strategically placed slits in my clothing so that I could reach such weapons more easily, but for now, it would do.

There were several small loaves of bread wrapped in wax paper, from the Covent Market, and a small sugar-cake in a pasteboard box. I'd also managed to secure some inexpensive ribbons to tie my hair back with, since I'd been unable to find any modern (or even any modern-esque) hair bands to tie my increasingly long hair back with.

Speak of the devil, I shook my head rapidly and used the back of my arm to brush a fallen strand of hair out of my eyes, since I couldn't blow it away due to the scarf in front of my mouth. _Yes, it's definitely a good idea to go visit a barber._

As I lowered my arm and pulled back my sleeve, I saw by my digital watch that it was somewhere around 5 PM, American time, and 17.00 everybody-else-time. If I hurried, I could go to the barber and get my…extracurricular activities…done with before I returned to the townhouse for dinner. Eating with Soma and Agni instead out buying something out here only saved me a few pounds (less, actually, since everything in this time period was so comparatively dirt-cheap), but more or less living under my own power –and budget– over these past few months had taught me that it was never a smart idea to turn down free _anything_.

The horse-drawn hansom rattled along the cobblestone streets, and I returned to people-watching, wrapping my arms around my borrowed rucksack like it was a teddy bear to keep it from being bounced out. I myself was nearly not so lucky, and I had several moments of near-panic as the carriage turned corners or bounced over potholes and I realized, while seatbelts seemed obviously necessary in modern times, back in the Victorian age one just simply had to hold on and trust their luck.

Hanging off the back of the carriage seemed oddly inviting, right now.

But the ride was over quicker than I expected, and the hansom dropped me off on Fleet Street while the sun's glow was still a red smear on the horizon, stark against the black-smoke-belching chimneys of London. The air was sharp and cold against my nose as I hopped out and gave the driver a friendly nod, pulling my directions out again and looking down as he rattled off in search of more customers.

> `(Dunstan's Barber Shoppe) 186 Fleet Street`

I glanced back up again, running my tongue along my lower lip absently as I searched for the matching address and storefront name. I was starting to get hungry, and wanted to finish this as quickly as possible.

Passing an old woman pushing a pie cart –heading indoors, now– I finally spotted the shop, looking sooty and mildewed in the late London evening. The glass in the front window was smeared and grimy, and I made a face as I pushed open the door. Sanitation was disgustingly absent in this century.

A bell tinkled above my head as I stepped into the shop, but oddly enough I didn't see anybody else inside. All there was was a single barber's chair, already tilted back and ready. "Uh, hello?" I tried loudly, my voice echoing in the empty room

"Coming!" A voice called faintly in the distance. "Just a second, miss!"

Shrugging, I decided to hop onto the chair and save time. I promptly regretted that decision, however, as soon as my head made contact with the cold metal headrest, for two reasons. Number one, this chair felt as if it hadn't been cleaned in years. However, the second, more unsettling reason, was because it faced away from the door that lead further into the shop, where the barber's voice had come from, and due to the configuration of the metal arms and back I couldn't turn my head to look unless I craned my body up and twisted myself at an awkward, shaky angle.

Granted this wasn't majorly unsettling, but I was still antsy. I didn't like the idea of someone coming up behind me, doubly so when that person would be wielding a sharp object.

A sharp clatter interrupted my thoughts, and I scooted around in the chair to twist backwards and glance around the back of the seat. The man whom I assumed to be the proprietor of this shop –and the barber himself– had just bustled into the room, dragging with him a small wooden cart with a porcelain bowl of water, some scissors, and an old-fashioned razorblade on top. I gulped slightly at the sight of the razor, which reminded me uncomfortably of a certain scary someone's weapon of choice.

"Been having a nice day, miss?" he asked cheerily as he manhandled the wobbly cart over to the chair. His voice was distracted, although bubbly, and he seemed to be a rather frazzled, absent-minded soul. Definitely not Oliver.

I remembered my place in the moment and shook my head rapidly to clear it, then offered him a shy, hesitant smile.

"Uh, yeah, sure." I said shortly, sliding back down to my former position and twisting around to face the way I was supposed to. "It's been busy."

"Busy's good!" he said happily, pumping a small lever as the chair began to tilt backward even more, like a dentist's chair, and I felt a trace of alarm.

"Um, yeah, so I need a haircut?" I interrupted awkwardly, indicating this by holding up a lock of my shoulderblade-length hair.

He blinked at me several times from his awkward position behind my head. "I'm afraid haircuts are not in my repertoire, miss." he told me apologetically, and I stiffened as I felt the cold brush of the razor against my cheek. "Shaving though, I can do shaving." he added hopefully from somewhere behind and above me, sounding happier as he did.

I was trying very hard not to get nervous at the familiar weapon touching my skin. "Ah –no."

"Oh." He lowered the razor, looking disappointed. "I could give you quite a polish though. The smoothest shave ever done."

I slumped slightly in the chair, slipping my hand into my coat and wrapping my fingers around the butt of my gun. It made me feel better, even though I obviously couldn't and wouldn't shoot this guy. "Um, that's nice mister, but I really don't need a shave. Just a haircut. If you can't do that, then I'm gonna make my way home." I told him, smiling awkwardly back into his face. He smiled back, and I tipped myself out of the chair.

"You look after me if you ever do need a shave, miss!" he told me cheerily as I walked out the door, and I nodded to him and tipped my straw hat.

"I'll do that, mister." I replied, suddenly very thankful that I still had a razor from the 21st century.

Who knew how clumsy these 19th-century barbers were with their blades.

_***Time Skip***_

With all of my mundane business taken care of, I had hitched another carriage ride –on the back, since it was significantly darker now and nobody would be around to gawk– to the nearest park. There was one more thing I had to do before I turned in for the night, and in the long run, it would be the most important.

As the carriage bounced and rattled along, I was somewhat amused and secretly grateful to see various other people also hopping rides in the same fashion as myself –although they were all invariably much dirtier, younger, and male. (Or at least, young enough and short-haired enough to appear that way.) It seemed as though the fictional _Monsieur_ Jack Harkett had been accurate in his description of his fellow London street population.

But anyway, the carriage soon rattled and bounced past one of London's many parks, and I scooted off, doing my best to avoid the brownish, mushy splatters in the street. They could be mud picked up on the wheels and the horses' shoes, or they could be something far worse that also had to do with the equine animals.

Best not to think about that.

I marched onto the pavement and into the park, looking around carefully to make sure nobody would see what I was up. Luckily, as the evening was getting on, most people seemed disinclined to be out and about in the half-frozen-slush-filled patch of grass and shrubs, and I made my way over to the twisted, brownish-green remains of what I assumed would be a flowerbed when spring finally came around.

Giving the darkened park another quick glance, I reached into my rucksack and pulled out the pasteboard box with the sugar-cake. Facing the flowerbeds, I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated hard, focusing on the familiar shape of a pentacle and the purpose I wanted to give it.

"A feast in return for a favor." I said clearly, opening the box and holding it out as I released the pentagram with a twist of my will.

There was a delicate impact on the pasteboard, and I opened my eyes to see a pixie inspecting the cake inside. I grinned, pleased that I had managed to use the same invitation as I had back at the Crystal Palace _without_ the cumbersome process of drawing it out.

The fairy chirped imperiously, directing my attention back to her as I smiled sheepishly. She was dark-skinned with enormous hazel-brown eyes, and her black hair was twisted up on top of her head in an imitation of some kind of Asian style, complete with teeny-tiny decorative sticks, and her dress was wrapped some kind of cloak or coat made of fluffy black fur –probably the stolen lining from a mitten. Her wings were clear and paned, like a dragonfly's, although she used them something like a cricket's as they slowly fluttered to a halt and hung down her back.

"I need to find some books on magic –grimoires, spellbooks, rune indexes, whatever. I don't know where the shops that sell them are." I told her. "I'm collecting the sigils that represent things in this world so that I can go back home to mine. Will you help me?"

She chirped an affirmative and then reached for the cake. I saw the faint glows and flutters that signaled other fairies approaching, and obligingly held the cake out further, looking around in vain for a spot to sit. Fairies didn't weigh a lot, but they _did_ have substance, and there were a whole lot of them using my arm as a resting place. I couldn't exactly just let it fall, after all, as that would be inexcusably rude (not to mention it would make the cake fall on the muddy, slushy, half-frozen ground).

Oh well. I needed the arm-improvement exercise anyway.

I waited patiently for the fairies to dole out the sugar cake amongst themselves, then waited for the inevitable chirping and squabbling between them to cease: much like bugs, most pixies didn't like cold weather, and it made their (already somewhat volatile) tempers flare up unpredictably.

Finally, after a solid five minutes, they ceased bickering with each other, and a few of them fluttered up into the air as the rest of them immediately either dove for my scarf to burrow under it for warmth or disappeared in small explosions of delicate, tiny sparks in various bright colors.

One of the ones hovering in front of me, with luminous deep green eyes and short spiky brown hair that I would be prepared to swear was slicked up with gel, chittered something and beckoned eagerly, and nothing loathe, I followed, feeling the fairies burrow further inside my scarf and coat and causing a feeling similar to little electric shocks every time they touched my skin.

The wind whistled and blew sharply through the various alleyways and small, twisted roads of this part of town as I walked, and sometimes presented such a force against their flight that the fairies leading me took similar refuge in my clothing, guiding me through small squeaks and gentle tugs at the parts of my clothes covering them.

In this fashion me and my guides progressed through the tangled maze of London streets and alleys and byways and lord knew what else, leaving me with confirmation of my somewhat mixed feelings on the neatness of American architecture. On one hand, the mathematically straight and imposing steel-and concrete skyscrapers of my homeland didn't afford much of the same charming…what was the word, quaintness, of European cities, what with all their various mixes of styles and ages and whatnot.

On the other hand, the hemmed-in conglomerate of a thousand-odd years' collection of higglety-pigglety buildings and crammed-together streets was _bloody hard to navigate_.

One of the fairies buried beneath my coat suddenly chirped, tugging at one of the buttons near my breastbone. Since she was on the right, I experimentally turned on my heel in that direction, and a chorus of encouraging chirps and twittering came from inside my clothes as I eyed the grungy alleyway directly in front of me with misgiving. If this was a horror movie, I was fairly certain the audience would be screaming _"don't you fucking **dare** "_ at the screen, because the only thing the door at the end lacked were theatrical blood splatters and perhaps a grim warning carved in stone –one that rhymed, of course.

However, since this _wasn't_ a horror movie, and I had yet to see a pixie give me bad advice, I drew my coat closer around myself –being careful not to squish anyone inside– and stepped into the alley, feeling the wind die down as I did. Several of the more insulated fairies then flitted out into the air in front of me, lighting the ominous-looking area in soft pastel glows as they all looked at me and smiled encouragingly.

I looked down at the doorknob, gulped, and reminded myself that I had both a gun and a combat knife on me at the moment, and swung open the door, taking a step forward into the dim gloom of the building as the pixies all crowded in behind me.

My first impression of the badly-lit room was that of warmth; either it was better insulated than any building I'd seen in this era to date, or somebody had built up a really roaring fire.

As I blinked several times and my eyes adjusted to the abrupt change in light, I realized that it was the latter: at the other end of a room stuffed with overflowing bookshelves there was a fireplace wider than I was tall, and inside it was a host of merrily dancing flames that filled the large (but rather cramped) room with waves of heat. They should have also filled it with light, but as I blinked again and did a double-take, I noticed that the fire was black, with little silver glints and shading that were just like the color variation in _real_ flames.

Well, that definitely confirmed that this was a place connected to magic somehow.

As I tore my eyes away from the fascinating fireplace, my eyes raked over the cluttered room, watching more of the fairies flit out of my clothes to inspect their surroundings. The space a little ways in front of the hearth was clear, probably to preserve the books from any heat-damage, but practically every other inch of the shop was stuffed with books, books, and more books, stacked on top of the crammed shelves, spilling over the ground, and bursting from the walls that were also lined with bookshelves. I could feel my fingers itching with literary greed just _looking_ at the place.

I could feel the knot of tension between my shoulders loosen up, too, because at least _now_ I had some kind of assistance with the momentous task of assembling my own magical dimension spell... _if_ I could find the books I needed amidst this…warzone, that is.

I sighed and then tugged the collar of my coat open, beginning to shed the heavy fabric before I started to sweat unpleasantly. _It's something, it's always **something**._ I thought with a weary sigh as I started towards the nearest bookshelf, and I craned my head sideways to read the faded titles on the topmost shelf.

_Herbal Remedys For The Magickal Afflictions Caused In Spellcasting, The Study and Practise of Communing with Daemons, something in French about wand(s), something in Greek, hey is that like Czech? And here's something in like Chinese, aaaaand that looks like a demon on its cover so moving the fuck on, no, no, no, hey, German! Oh, it's about Weiße Frauen. Welp, I'm not exactly interested in impossible quests not my own **or** nude sunbathing women, so back on the shelf you go. Nope, nope, Latin, nope, the hell kind of language is **that**? Was this somebody's personal grimoire? Nope, nope, nah, nu-uh, no, and nein._

A sudden chorus of frightened, high-pitched cheeps made me whip my head up again, and I gaped as all the various pixies that had followed me into the store dove for me and my clothing, worming under my sleeves and collar and my scarf and even going to far as to (attempt to) hide in my hair. "What's wrong?" I asked in surprise and no small amount of urgency, since something that could spook a fairy was by definition bad news, and one of the ones buried in my scarf reached up to tug a strand of my blonde hair, urging me to look to the left. I looked, and gulped as I saw a crabbed-looking man stumping through my aisle of shelves.

He had a tangled, greasy mass of black hair that fell over his eyes so that I couldn't guess their color, and a ragged white scar cut across his weathered face. He was dressed in what I could tell was a very cheap black suit, heavily patched and tattered, and even though he walked firmly, I got the suggestion that his joints pained him. I guesstimated his age to be about thirty or forty, and as I reflexively pressed up against the bookshelves to let him pass, I caught a whiff of some kind of brandy, and another sickly-sweet stretch under _that_ that made my heart twist and pound against my ribs –a scent that I had at one point only associated with _Oliver_ , until Britain had taught me better.

_Rotting flesh._

Necromancer, kooky self-science project, or just some creep that happened to work with dead body parts, he was still an evil or at least a corrupt user of magic, and I was staying the _fuck_ away from him. I swallowed hard as I pressed more tightly against the shelf, feeling book spines dig into my back, completely understanding why the pixies had reacted so badly the black-haired man's presence. The anti-magic that necromancy required –yes, almost certainly a necromancer, I decided as I saw a skeletal tattoo on his neck– was anathema to them, poison to their very senses, because necromatic magic so badly warped the natural order of the world in order for people to see (or more often, just hear) the people who had passed beyond the veil.

The necromancer paused to glare at me as he passed, and I gulped as I saw the double-take when he noticed the pixies in my clothes. I could feel his gaze rise to my face, and he sneered wordlessly at me before whirling and continuing to stalk through the shelves. I could practically hear his disdain for the sissy blonde apprentice –and who'd apprentice a mere _female_ , anyways?– who was so doe-eyed and naïve that she actually bothered to _befriend_ mere magical creatures, especially such twinkle-toed do-gooders as fairies.

 _The antipathy is mutual, you money-grubbing bereaved-tormenting soul-stealing bastard._ I thought as I glared after his back, remembering what my teacher had told me about necromancers. Contrary to popular belief, seeing or hearing your beloved loved ones after they died was neither comforting to the still-living nor gave them any closure. It was sort of like calling home when you were homesick; you might _think_ it'd make you feel better, but it always just ended up in making you feel worse. Necromancers got rich off of people who didn't know that and dumped money in their hands again and again to catch a glimpse or hear a whisper of the person(s) that they lost. The spirits the necromancer bound were also in incredible torment, because nine times out of ten they weren't _supposed_ to be back on this side of the veil, or limbo, or whatever else the place between the afterlife and the real world could be called. The metaphor that _I_ most vividly recalled my teacher using was that pulling spirits out of the afterlife was like yanking a seven-month baby out of its mom by the umbilical cord –you had to be a _special_ kind of asshole to do it.

Ideally, I would have liked to shove him into the fireplace and/or riddle his back with bullets, but since attacking another magician of unknown power and temperament probably wouldn't end well for me, I had to be content with glaring after his back and silently vowing to look up some spells I could use to sic something violent and hungry on his ass.

Then I remembered I was supposed to be good and keep my head down and nose clean, under threat of Sebastian, and swore under my breath.

_Maybe I can sic a barghest on him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 1.28 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: February 13th, 2017, 11.50 AM USA Central Time


	22. That Butler, Chesspiece

Arya's POV:

I waited for a good five minutes after the necromancer had passed before I finally unpeeled myself from the bookshelf. The fairies sprinkled liberally across my person did not withdraw from their hiding places, reaching out to cling to whichever portions of me they could manage as though for comfort, which only made sense –they were small and weak, when it came to magical power, and as such, very vulnerable to the destructive whims of another magician. Their best bet was to use me as a shield and hope for the best.

Taking in a deep breath, slowly I eased my stance and infused my aura with magic, a trick Britain had taught me to help soothe magical creatures. It worked: after a few moments, some of the pixies started peeking out from my clothing, and a few of the bolder ones even fluttered out, though they still hovered within arm's reach of me –my arms, not theirs.

Evil fellow customers aside, I did have to get my books. I looked at the pixies.

"Do you think you can help me find books with magic sigils in them, representing as many things and places as they can?" I asked gently, warming my aura even more. "You don't have to leave me. Just guide me there."

A series of nervous squeaks sounded as the fairies debated that amongst themselves, before one trailing autumn colors like a comet glided by me, beckoning me onwards over her shoulder. I followed as she wove her way throughout the bookshelves, occasionally fluttering close to one and stroking it with a tiny hand. These I picked up, after a quick pagethrough to check that they really were what I wanted. Not that I didn't trust the fairies implicitly, but I wasn't entirely sure any of them could, you know… _read_.

The secondary problem with this method was that the fairy picked more books than I could carry, even at the full-arms-length-extended, stack-tucked-under-chin method, and even when I had enough she still kept pointing out more.

Plonking my stack down on a nearby end table, I regarded the extra books the fairy had indicated –just for this aisle- in consternation.

Then again, I might be jumping ahead of the cart here.

"Where's the shopkeep for this place?" I asked curiously, using a gloved hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and hitching my satchel a little higher on my shoulder, since it had been in danger of slipping off due to my focus on carrying the books.

"At your elbow, madam. Has this establishment not met you standards?"

I squeaked and turned around, seeing no one there. Then I looked down.

A shimmering crystal mannequin of…something stood roughly at my waist, looking up through cool, impersonal translucent eyes. I blinked twice.

"Uh…golem?" I asked blankly, without thinking.

The creature blinked slowly, showing no visible offense. "Simulacrum, madam. I trust you have found our volumes to your satisfaction?"

I scratched the back of my head. "Um…yeah. Yeah –actually, uh, the problem is I found a bit too much. How much for all of that?"

I pointed to the stack, and the…lizard-like, there were definite reptilian elements in there, the lizard-like simulacrum blinked slowly again and waddled over to the suddenly logically-short table I'd placed the books on.

"For this, madam, we would charge £10.18 –this includes an instant delivery to a location of your choice, free of charge."

I blinked twice. "Seriously?!"

The simulacrum owner turned to look up at me, the pearly glow in the back of its carved eyes turning cold and hard. "Such service is obligatory, madam, to ensure this establishment operates without ties to and outside clashes between those who use magic. We cater to all, as long as we are paid."

I gulped. _Well, that explains the necromancer._

"Yeah…oh-kay, so I will want those, and, um, maybe some more if I can carry them and, uh…"

I wasn't sure if I should announce my budget towards someone who would have a vested interest in parting me from my money.

It seemed to understand my hesitancy. "We are of course honored to accept your patronage to whichever degree you chose to impart it." the simulacrum said with somber courtesy. "Should you chose to divulge your area of study and current budget, I will do my solemn best to locate the correct number of relevant volumes for you."

I shifted uncomfortably, glancing towards the few hovering pixies around me. They nodded and squeaked affirmatively, and I looked back towards the simulacrum.

"I'm looking for, uh, world-qualifying sigils, things that specify particular elements and locations. I got 14.25." I said, and the simulacrum nodded slowly.

"I believe we have several more items that would suit." it replied gravely.

_***Time Skip***_

Arranging to have the books delivered to Ciel's townhouse –since I could add them to my luggage on Dämon when I returned home– was the last thing I did that night before hitching a ride back to said townhouse, greeting Soma and Agni with a tired wave before collapsing on my bed and sleeping the night through.

In the morning, Soma would hear of nothing less than having breakfast with me, chattering excitedly all the while about the amazing things he had seen in Great Britain ever since Ciel appointed him as manager to the Phantomhive townhouse. It was nice to talk to him: for once, there was someone with near about the same inexperience as me, since although Soma was part of this time period proper, he was also from halfway across the world, and therefore just as new to many of the Victorian things as I was. Sure, I didn't have to watch my mouth around Ciel and Sebastian, who already knew I wasn't even from this world, but I had to constantly check myself and think before I said a single word to other people. I even had to reign in my behavior, because ladies didn't whistle, ladies didn't wear anything but skirts, ladies didn't discuss anything but the most prim and innocent of subjects, ladies didn't…

The list was endless. It was also startling to notice just how much of my vocabulary was devoted to modern pop culture references and slang, and thusly ineligible for use right now.

So it was nice to chat with Soma, who wouldn't notice my little slips, even if he did keep drawing things back to how they related to his eventual rulership of his territory in India.

"Eh? What do you mean, presi-dent?" Soma asked curiously, lifting his head slightly from where he had been resting his cheek on his palm.

"We elect someone to be our supreme leader –kinda like a king– for four years, only he's got like checks and balances and stuff to keep him from being the ultimate supreme leader and having control of everything." I said absently, considering the table before us. I picked up a rook and moved it two spaces to the left. "Check."

"Mm. It seems strange for a country not to have a ruler who controls everything." Soma said uncertainly as he relaxed down to lean against his hand again, reaching out to move his king out of danger.

I shrugged and moved another piece. " 'S the way we've both been raised, I guess. I mean, you _are_ being raised to take control of _your_ country when you get older."

"True." Soma excitedly moved his white bishop to take one of my pawns. "Perhaps I shall visit this America after I learn even more from Great Britain!"

"Journeying so far away would mean that messages to and from home may take even longer to receive." Agni observed as he entered the room with a tea tray, though it was laden for Hindustani rather than English high tea. He set a cup and saucer down before the both of us. "Please forgive my forwardness, Miss Thompson, but since you came in so late last evening, I thought something to warm you up might be in order."

"Nah, thanks, this is great." I said happily, picking up my cup and taking an appreciative sip as Soma did the same.

"What were you doing out so late, anyway?" he asked curiously as Agni hovered on the sidelines, and I brushed a lock of my increasingly long hair out of my eyes.

"Eh, shopping, business stuff, nothing important." I said with a casual, "shoo-shoo" sort of flick of my hand. Soma filled his cheeks with a huff of air, puffing them out in the the manner of a petulant, pouting child.

"That is not safe. You should not be going out alone, especially this late at night! Agni always accompanies _me_ on _my_ errands whenever I go out shopping."

"Thanks for the offer, but I think I'm safe." I said with a little laugh, shifting another pawn. "I'm not going anywhere dangerous."

_Not to mention the explanations I would have to rattle off if I dragged either one of them to a magician's bookshop._

Going back a little, after we had finished eating our breakfast, Soma had immediately decided to drag me into this bout of chess –citing our mutual need for practice as his reasoning, though I was fairly certain he was just lonely, no slight on his favorite companion and manservant intended. Though Agni was good and cheerful company, I was a lot closer to Soma's age, and, it must be said, a lot more prone to chattering.

I also suspected it had something to do with getting practice in so he could beat Ciel the next time the earl visited.

"Speaking of travels, I will visit this "America" someday." Soma said resolutely, giving me a beaming smile. "I will see this "White House" and "Lady Liberty" and all the other sights that you have! I will be a respected gentleman, whom everyone admires!"

"Not sure everyone would admire you if you're obviously a noble –we're still not very big on them." I said with a light laugh. "But you're cheerful and not overbearing –I think that alone will endear you to just about everyone."

Soma's eyes practically sparkled with joy, and I grinned in response and spoke before I knew it. "Who knows? I might just visit India someday, too –if you go to America."

"It's a deal!" Soma agreed, and we touched the fingertips of index fingers together in what was apparently his vision of a pinky promise.

_Shit, now I actually **do** need to go to India or else the Curse of Broken Pinky Promise will haunt me to the end of my days._

We continued in this vein for some time as Agni drifted in and out, offering and replacing tea services, shifting our chess pieces across the board as we chattered. This game was lasting a long time –not out of any great skill, but actually something rather the opposite.

We were both shit at chess.

Granted, I only had a passing familiarity of the pieces and their powers from various references and metaphors in fantasy, and the rules _were_ somewhat simple, and chess _was_ largely about strategy, but…I was still shit. Britain had never played any matches with me, probably because he had centuries of practice and I would provide no stimulation as an opponent whatsoever, and so I was going into this game nearly blind. Good chess was about experience, which I sorely lacked.

Soma, I suspected, was playing under an equal disability, or at least, he wasn't much better than I was, and if he _had_ any experience, he was hiding what few scraps of higher knowledge he might have so as not to embarrass me. If it was the second, that was nice of him.

Thus it happened that the weak February sun was high in the sky before Agni came in again to our unfinished game, bowing respectfully.

"I do hate to interrupt, but there is a crate delivery for Miss Thompson at the front door." he said as he straightened, and I did the blink version of a double take.

 _Man, that's some wicked fast service._ I thought. No wonder that simulacrum –which had politely refused to tell me it's name– managed to keep itself separate from quarrels and feuds in this intrigue-boiling universe: near-instant delivery would be a revelation to the Victorians, and that coupled with reasonable prices, eminent privacy, and quality goods would make such an establishment practically invaluable.

"Uh, okay, I guess." I said uncertainly, half-rising before sinking back down and turning to give Soma an apologetic smile. "Sorry, um, duty calls and all that. I guess we'll finish the game later?"

"We have no need to." Soma announced brightly, and snapped his fingers. "Agni! Take her place and help me finish this match!"

Agni looked discomfited. "My prince, I am not at all certain of my ability to replicate Miss Thompson's strategies…"

"Nonsense, you'll do fine!" me and Soma said confidently at the same time, then looked at each other, and laughed.

"Okay, but seriously man, I'm counting on you to make me win!" I said as I slid out of the chair and me and Agni exchanged seats, giving him a friendly fistbump on the shoulder. The white-haired man smiled nervously at me, then looked at the board as Soma jabbed a self-important finger at him.

"Listen well, Agni!" he said, puffing out his cheeks. "I will not tolerate it if you go easy on me and let me snatch the victory! This is a battle of wits to hone my skills, so that I may properly entertain Ciel the next time he visits!"

_I fucking knew it._

"You must struggle against me with all your might, as my _khansama!"_

"My prince, it is because of my role as your _khansama_ that I feel uncomfortable to engage in a battle of such…"

I smiled to myself as I shut the door and proceeded down the hallway, hearing their banter fade behind me. It was nice to see Soma chatter like a good-natured normal person, rather than be cooped up in the confining role of princeship that he must've labored under for such a long time. Being a spoiled brat into the bargain also likely hadn't helped his attempts at making friends, but now, with that particular personality flaw buffed out, he was indeed growing into a likeable, if somewhat airheaded, young man.

In the meantime, I had a crate of books to drag up to my room and study.

_***Time Skip***_

A few hours after I had gone back past the drawing room –hearing through the doors that Soma and Agni had reverted to their native Hindustani as they continued to talk– with my crate in laborious tow, I sat among a scattered minefield of opened books and rubbed my temples with both hands. This was going to be…difficult.

Okay, more than difficult, this was going to be _bloody fucking hard_ , and I was in strong need of an Advil or three and a glass of water, and only one of those could be procured at this juncture. I flopped backwards onto the book-strewn bed and closed my eyes with a groan, feeling several hard corners and edges poke into my spine with indifference. After all, what was one more ache at this point?

I couldn't focus. My thoughts kept circling back to the necromancer I'd seen in the bookshop –what was he up to, who was he squeezing, how many souls was he tormenting to do it? And more importantly, what could I do about it? I was just an apprentice, after all, and not a very experienced one.

_It's not as if I can just kick him to one of the supernatural beings around here and then run the other way-_

My eyes flicked open. Now there was a thought. There were plenty of nasty and maybe not-so-nasty beasts in this world with plenty of grudges against magic-workers, and of all the sorcerers to loathe, necromancers were generally near the top, running a close second to demon-summoners. If I, hypothetically, made it known that such a magician was doing business in such-and-so of an area, well…things would probably take care of themselves.

I didn't think I was –quite– ready to physically pull the trigger on someone to kill them, even an evil someone: but I also wasn't ready to just let things stand. Necromancy the way that it was practiced here was a blight, a cancer, a curse. It needed to be cleansed, and even if I didn't really have the exact levels of ruthlessness needed to axe the guy myself, I did have the sense of duty and the morals necessary to ensure the job got done, somehow.

Plans began spinning in my mind. After all, if this just so _happened_ to require a business trip that took me out of Phantomhive purview for the Circus Arc…well, all the better.

With any amount of luck, the only murder-happy person in my near future would be me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 1.35 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 14th, 2019, 2.21 PM USA Central Time


	23. That Butler, Hunting Dogs

_Arya's POV:_

Okay, first things first, I had to assess my resources.

_  
One (1) metric fuckton of magic books.  
One (1) not-very-practiced magic apprentice.  
One (1) evil horse.  
Zero (0) money.  
Zero (0) magical tools.  
Zero (0) knowledge of the literal and metaphorical terrain.  
_

Soooo, the first thing I should do was learn the terrain, literal and metaphorical. The necromancer would probably have defenses geared up against anything that might randomly try to take a chunk out of him, and if anything I'd learned about the magical politics in this world was true, he also probably had multipurpose defenses geared _specifically_ against someone who summoned something to take him out. I would either have to conjure something that could crack those barricades –implausible, since I didn't know their strength and would have to overestimate rather than underestimate his power and thus need to summon something way stronger than I could probably handle– or wait until his guard was lowered and _then_ hit him with everything I had.

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Item two, when and where would the necromancer let his guard down? It wasn't likely to be during a séance session, that was generally when a necromancer needed to have the _most_ protections up, what with errant spirits and otherworldly reprisals and whatnot. In whatever hovel he called home (what with all the grease and general mess, I was betting he didn't have a high-rise apartment) the necromancer was also likely to be less vulnerable, because the whole "every man's home is his castle/fortress" saying generally became _literal_ when magicians were factored into the equation. Nobody built a home without making it feel safe, and no magic-worker worth his or her salt would inhabit a dwelling without casting wards and protections on it. That would be doubly the case with a walker of the Dark Paths, since they had to guard against especially nasty visitors _as well_ as the rest of the sorcerous population.

Ideally, it'd be best to target him during the day, as he went about his normal routine. Humans were creatures that instinctively followed and trusted patterns, and once patterns were firmly established, we tended to go blind to them, going about the day on autopilot and trusting (correctly) to habit to get things done. With repetition, the pattern of the day became invisible purely _because_ it was so repetitive, an endlessly regenerating cycle that there was no _point_ in paying attention to, because it never changed. Because of that, actively recalling the specifics of the patterns and habits of one's own day-to-day life was hard, because the human brain was geared towards remembering anomalies _in_ said patterns, not the actual actions that made them up: it was a waste of neurons to do anything but commit the pattern and move on.

Thusly, people's guard generally lowered in their day-to-day routines, unless they were an assassin or expecting to be assassinated or something like that. It was too much needless mental effort to deliberately register and think through each action of the day as they went through, therefore, people always, _always_ focused more on _what_ they were doing in a routine, how it pertained to future events and other things on their train of thought, rather than how or why they were doing it.

Thus, catching this necromancer mid-routine would hopefully be my best shot at taking him by surprise.

This, of course, opened up a new range of problems: namely, how the _hell_ I was going to make myself aware of his schedule, since the fairies would be highly unwilling to get within so much as sniper range of a necromancer, and I really had no other way to scope him out, since the necromancer would _definitely_ catch me scrying him out (if I could even manage scrying to begin with) and I didn't want to make too many ripples in the magical community by sending out inquiries, however discreet. Tailing him directly was also nope, since I had no idea of where the necromancer even _was_.

Dang it.

I sat up on the bed, making a belated motion to gather and close all my books, since rolling around on the bed like I had been was sure to crumple their pages and I _had_ kinda spent the current equivalent of roughly 2,000 USD on all these old tomes.

Plans, plans. Could I summon something bigger than the fairies to track this guy?

Yeah, maybe, except summoning anything successfully required various summoning paraphernalia, and I didn't have any of that stuff. Sure, I _could_ grab some here and there, but roughshod tools, or worse, ones made from random items one picked up, was generally not a good idea. It was like using a rusty cap on a fire hydrant –bad things were bound to happen, _eventually_ , if you didn't use something specifically made for the job.

"HrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRM!" My groan revved up in tone as I faceplanted back down on the mattress, growing volume slightly muffled by the bedspread.

Life was so much _easier_ when I had a 1000+ year-old mentor to guide me and my endeavors, not to mention splurge on the few magical tools he didn't already have in his basement.

"Geh." I rolled over and scowled blankly up at the ceiling. What to do, what to do…

Well, okay, what _didn't_ need special and specific tools –other than one's own will and perhaps a stick to draw a pentacle with– to summon, like the fairies, but maybe a bit bigger?

Elbows crooked outwards, I ground the heel of my palms into my closed eyes with another groan, trying to think. Summon, summon…summoning was a magical call. You could "call" fairies very easily, if you were a benign magician that is, because they were low in power and didn't take a lot of magic to "tug" to wherever you were or wherever you wanted them. What else was like that, but wasn't as skittish around a necromancer?

Fuck. Most things that were easy to summon were consequently weak, and therefore useless to my purposes. The _only_ thing that I knew as an exception to that rule was summoning a creature that, if not already _there_ , had close ties to whatever "there" you were: namely, how it was pathetically easy to call ghosts near the places they were buried or had died, even though some could be quite powerful and dangerous.

Problem was, any safeguards the necromancer had in permanent place were likely _exclusively_ designed towards malignant spirits. Inconvenient bastard.

_So ghosts won't work…can't sic a barghest on him either, since that's a complicated summoning and I…_

I froze.

Wait a minute. Wait just one flying fruity fucking minute.

A barghest _specifically_ , yes. But there were tons of legends of ghostly black dogs all around Great Britain, monstrous black dogs with burning eye(s) and slavering jaws and infernal powers and all the rest of it. _If_ I could travel to one of those hotspots, and _if_ I could conjure one of said dogs from there, then my problem was as good as taken care of.

I lurched up and grabbed for my apocalypse bag, shifting through the infinite contents until I came up with a modern US penny and map of England.

"A'right," I mumbled, spreading the map over my nearby desk and holding the crinkled edges down with some of the magic books. "The legends are usually divided by county, so…"

I looked at the penny in my hand, slowly forcing my magic into the copper disk. "Is there a Black Dog I can summon and use for benevolent purposes in-" Quick glance at the map. "-East Anglia? Heads for yes, tails for no."

I flipped the coin with a soft _jing_ of metal. Nope.

"Is there a Black Dog I can summon and use for benevolent purposes in the Southeast? Heads for yes, tails for no."

Nope again.

"Is there a Black Dog I can summon and use for benevolent purposes in London? Heads for yes, tails for no."

_Jing._

…yeah, I didn't think so.

"Is there a Black Dog I can summon and use for benevolent purposes in the Southwest? Heads for yes, tails for no."

Ooh, heads!

I squinted at my map. "Okay, um…is there a Black Dog I can summon and use for benevolent purposes in Wiltshire? Heads for yes, tails for no."

Negative.

"Gloucestershire?"

"Dorset?"

I continued my crude divination technique until the penny landed Lincoln-up again, on Somerset, and then patiently continuing flipping the coin until I landed on one particular city –Bridgwater, which was very near the coast.

So, so, so. Now my options.

I opened one of the rattling drawers in the desk and pulled out a stiff piece of paper and an envelope, fishing one-handed in my bag for a pen that didn't only work for calligraphy I was unused to. The way I planned this, I was _definitely_ going to be absent from both manor and townhouse when Ciel came to visit, and I'd best have my explanations in order, or else the woe of failing to find a proper Black Hound would be the least of my concerns…

`Dear Boss,`

(By this I meant Ciel)

`Something's come up that I have to look into. The magical community is full of peril, and I've just found my way clear to eliminating one particularly nasty fellow specimen. Unfortunately, I need to set up some preliminaries to do so, and to do that, I need to travel to Somerset for a few days, more specifically the town of Bridgwater. I won't be doing anything particularly illicit (you can send Sebastian out to check on me, I don't care) but please instruct him not to interrupt me while doing any magical business, as I will be attempting to summon a black dog (which you may know as a shuck or a barghest) and while it will ultimately be benevolent, such creatures are wild and sometimes hard to control and an interrupted ritual will, not to out too fine a point on it, blow everything to hell.`

`Hoping you have success in whatever brought you to the townhouse,`

`   


`Aryana Thompson`

`

I capped my pen and smiled with pleasure. One trip to seal the envelope with wax and another to deposit it with Soma, with injunctions not to open ever and to hand _only_ to Ciel, and I would be well on my way to making the world just that little bit shinier.

Of course, I'd have to see just how long it took to get to Somerset by horseback, but really, how bad could that be?

_***Time Skip***_

I regarded the stationmaster with misgiving.

"Two days?" I asked. The mustachioed gentleman nodded dourly.

"By horse, mum, two days. Could be shorter if you took a train, could be shorter if you pushed th' horse faster than perhaps a horse should be pushed. It's thirteen hours by horseback, mum, not a trip to take at once."

I looked over my shoulder, towards the broad entrance door to the street, where another stoic porter was firmly gripping the reins of my very testy horse somewhere outside on the curb. Given as it was only just now quickening towards lunchtime, thirteen hours would mean, if I _did_ go horseback, I would be pounding into town somewhere near midnight.

Which, given as I wanted to summon a borderline dark creature, likely in some creepy outdoor locale, was not exactly a problem.

_Fuck you man, I do what I want. Dämon'll be fine if I feed him enough magic._

That being said, I thanked the man politely and went outside to claim my horse. As I had specified once far away from the townhouse that Sebastian's sinister presence would not register, a sturdy-looking fairy was plopped between my horse's ears, her scaled wings twitching slightly on the outside of her puffball garment in her excitement to act as my living GPS. Dressed to combat the weather, as I was in my Russian winter coat, scarf, and mittens, the fairy took everything I'd done a step further and had _somehow_ , someway, plunked herself into a perfectly spherical ball of fur. I wasn't sure if it was dress or coat, one snippet of fur or many, or even just fibers spiked out by magic, but she looked as snug as a bug in a rug, despite the reptilian appearance of her glistening green wings.

"Alright," I said, hoisting myself over the saddle and trying to speak as quietly as possible to avoid stares. "Lead the way to Somerset, please."

The pixie squeaked gleefully and pointed, and I clenched my knees around his middle and tugged Dämon in that direction, settling back from my superior height and letting the horse trot carefully through the streets, avoiding hansoms and other carriages with the grace of a ballet dancer and ease of a practiced urbanite.

Cold weather or no, I had this in the bag.

_***Time Skip***_

It was some time later, long after we'd broken out of the tangled brick of London and inhaled the fresher, less polluted frosty air with relief, long after I'd had a very bouncy lunch of apples and cheese, long after the sun had stretched flat and red over the ice-crusted black horizon, long after I had to trust the fairy and move slow at each intersection, the starlight dim and uncertain, and long after we moved with increased confidence once again, galloping by the light of the moon, that the fairy finally chittered in satisfaction and fluttered back to join me at my shoulder, glowing –literally– with satisfaction.

By that, I judged we had arrived, and pulled back on the reins a little, slowing Dämon down as he trotted up over the crest of a long, gently sloping hill. Faded lights glowed ahead amongst geometrical stacks and tangles of blackness, indicating a town, specifically the town we sought, and I looked at the glowing fairy.

"Two more things, please." I said, yawning a little behind one mittened hand and trying to ignore my sadlesoreness. "First, can you guide us to a place where the local Black Dog could be most easily summoned? Second, after I'm done with that, could you please find us a place to stay in the town?"

The fairy gulped nervously, but nodded, fluttering off down towards the town, but at an angle, one that would probably take us adjacent to it. I shifted, looking after her, and then stifled a groan as all the sore muscle groups beneath my waist twanged in protest.

"Uh, on second thought?"

The fairy chirped and looked over her shoulder. I gave her a slightly pained smile: I was cold, hungry, and tired from my second night in a row of obnoxiously late bedtimes. I could afford –it would be better for plot-avoidance– to take some time with this.

"Why don't we switch up that order, and find someplace warm and cozy for the night, and we'll look for the shuck tomorrow?"

The fairy's eyes brightened with glee, and she trilled an affirmative before whirling and zooming off, leaving a sparkling trail behind her on the air. I clicked through my numb lips to Dämon and nudged him after the scarf of glittering motes that hung above the frosty road, leading into town.

_3rd Person POV:_

Ciel, it must be admitted, was not possessed of an overly patient temper. While he may be an expert in hiding his true emotions under a placid and smirking mask, that fact did not detract from the seething rage and gritted teeth beneath his cool facade. And he may have the patience of a saint for his games and strategies (oh, how damnably poetic of an irony), but that did not mean that he would not gleefully enjoy a few punitive extra blows of retaliation against a conquest who had vexed him, however triflingly.

That being said, Prince Soma was pushing him to his absolute limits.

Hardly had Ciel stepped one booted foot through the door than the idiot prince pounced –there was no other word for it. All smiles and infectious laughter and expansive gestures, he had pushed his not-inconsiderable charisma to its absolute limit to make Ciel feel warm and welcome _in his own townhouse_ from the moment the young earl met his sight. Ciel may – _may_ – have forgiven him for such emotional extravagance if the prince had just kept his notions to himself, but alas, that was not a skill Soma was ever likely to perfect.

"Why, if it isn't Ciel! You miss me already?!" the prince laughed in boisterous good spirits, hands on both hips. Agni laughed with him, obedient butler that he was. "You Little Boy Blue, you!"

"I was called back to attend to my business." Ciel said with a frost-edged smile, slightly strained at the edges –the prince was already grinding his temper down in good order.

"You're hopeless without, me, eh? Really, what am I going to do with you?"

Ciel's eye twitched. It was a nonstop stream of this _drivel_ , as Sebastian carried his effects up, as he went down again to prepare the carriage, while Ciel was forced by the manners of good society to smile and nod and wait with increasing irritation for his butler to finish the work so they could head off again.

"Fine, you can call me Big Brother if you like!"

"Cieeeel!"

"You're really helpless without me!"

"Ahahahaha~!"

" _Is Miss Thompson present in the townhouse_?" he ground out at long last, desperate enough even to wish for the distraction of the American magician to at least take the prince's attention _off_ of him.

Soma blinked. "Oh, no, she left earlier this morning." he said carelessly, taking Ciel aback.

"What?! _Why?"_ he asked, an unguarded, palpable snap to his controlled voice. Sebastian drifted back into the foyer less than a moment later, drawn by the sound and sense of his contractor's distress.

Agni descended down the steps to stand even with his master, rummaging in his uniform to pull out a roughly sealed letter, inexpertly daubed with a thick clot of red sealing wax to hold it shut. "Ah, Miss Thompson did not make us privy to that information. However, she did address to you this letter, with strict instructions for it to be left until you called."

Ciel, narrowed his eyes and took the letter, unsealing the clumsy wax with a sharp tug of his gloved fingers. Could she have possibly learned something of the Noah's Arc Circus and gone to investigate? Or worse –was she connected to them somehow, and fleeing after a guilty admission?

Well, only one way to find out.

Without addressing either of the two Indians, he took his leave with Sebastian, scanning over the inelegant if certainly legible print (evidently Miss Thompson did not know copperplate) as he walked.

* * *

`Dear Boss,`

`Something's come up that I have to look into. The magical community is full of peril, and I've just found my way clear to eliminating one particularly nasty fellow specimen. Unfortunately, I need to set up some preliminaries to do so, and to do that, I need to travel to Somerset for a few days, more specifically the town of Bridgwater. I won't be doing anything particularly illicit (you can send Sebastian out to check on me, I don't care) but please instruct him not to interrupt me while doing any magical business, as I will be attempting to summon a black dog (which you may know as a shuck or a barghest) and while it will ultimately be benevolent, such creatures are wild and sometimes hard to control and an interrupted ritual will, not to out too fine a point on it, blow everything to hell.`

`Hoping you have success in whatever brought you to the townhouse,`

  


`Aryana Thompson`

* * *

"Did Miss Thompson, in fact, actually write this missive?" he asked as he finished, climbing into the carriage as he handed it off to his butler. Sebastian took the pale paper as he followed suit, sitting on the padded backwards-facing seat as expected of a servant. The demon inspected the letter carefully, scanning the lines and even going so far as to sniff lightly at the ink, before he nodded and handed it back.

"The scent of magic is unmistakable, my lord." he said smoothly as the carriage jolted into motion. "Furthermore in that it is quite faint and the bearer is tangibly new to the Art. I would venture that the contents as well as the letter itself is genuine."

"Mmm." Ciel read over the lines again and tried to quell his deep foreboding. "What's this _'shuck'_ she mentions?"

"A ghostly hound. There are many local legends of such creatures in England, and they are usually bringers of misfortune and death." the demon hummed, glancing without true focus or interest out of the curtained window to his right. "Likely she is attempting to invoke it to destroy a rival as she claims. Do you wish me to travel to Somerset and confirm this?"

Ciel considered his options for a moment. Then, "No. Make sure it is all she has done upon her return: we have the case of the missing children to attend to."

And with that, Ciel firmly put all thoughts of the _magician_ , and all the dreadful memories her title brought back, to the side. He had other things to focus on at present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 13th, 2020, 2.00 PM USA Central  
> Originally Posted: August 15th, 2019, 11.16 AM USA Central Time


	24. That Butler, Hoar-Hound

_Arya's POV:_

Finding a place that was still open, cleanly enough I wouldn't have to worry about being mugged in my sleep, and didn't cuss me out into the street for coming in at nearly 2 o'clock in the morning was an… _interesting_ adventure, to say the least. Bridgwater wasn't near the size of Bath or London, and it wasn't exactly on the beaten path, which meant that although theoretically hotels would be open 24/7, or at least have a concierge at the desk willing to book you in 24/7, in _practice_ most of the ones here had a grizzled old man slumped and snoring over a desk, _if_ the front doors even opened at all. The aching muscles in my legs got to the point where I nearly cramped up every time I wincingly dismounted from Dämon to check a hotel, and I was nearly inchoate with longing over the idea of a good old 21st-century hot soak.

Alas, I wouldn't be getting any such thing until I left this world. Oh, woe, woe for the marvels of modern plumbing and boilers.

As I stumbled and click-creaked my way towards this latest candidate, there was the warm glow of a lantern flickering on the other side of the coal-dust-smeared window, which was a good sign, and when I thumped my icy fist against the door once for warning and turned the knob, it gave, which was another good sign. The room was a bit grimy, but living in Victorian times told me that unless one was the owner of a vast estate and equally vast army of maids and menservants, keeping anything clean up to the standards I was used to was an exercise in futility.

But while it wasn't sparkling, everything was as clean as may be under the circumstances, the man dozing at the desk neither swilled nor smelling of unsavory things, and his clothes were neat and well-presented. This was a good, upper-class establishment.

I shuffled my way over and gingerly rapped my knuckles against the scarred and polished wooden desk, waking him. I'd gotten this far before, only to be disappointed.

He awoke with a snort, looked around for a little bit, and I gave a nervous smile as his watery blue eyes landed on me.

"So, uh…"

"Goodness!" he coughed, shaking his jowled head and leaning forward a little as he harrumphed into a fist. "Apologies, madam. A room?"

_Oh thank **god**._

"Yeah!" I said as my weary expression turned inside out. "Single bed, for at least two nights, and I'll need my horse stabled?"

He nodded several times, pulling over the ledge and making the appropriate bowing and scraping motions expected of servicemen everywhere in the British Empire…which was still a thing. Huh.

_Jeez, I keep forgetting that they're still doing their evil-bastard colonization schtick now._

He named the price with the utmost of conciliatory tones, and I handed over the "pin money" Soma had generously dumped on me when I explained I was tight on funds for the moment, pin money that by my calculations would probably buy several weeks' worth of hotel service.

Oh well. One could never have too much hard cash.

Once my check-in was complete, I trailed behind the man to make sure I wasn't subjecting Dämon to a cold and thankless night after riding him hard all day –even though I had supplemented his natural energy and stamina with magic– and, once satisfied that my horse was going to spend as comfortable a night as me, tottered up the rickety stairs to the second floor, the fairy surprisingly fluttering along behind me as I turned my key and revealed the well-kept tiny suite I would be staying in for the rest of my foreseeable future in Bridgwater.

Shedding all my many layers of snow garments and dropping them on the rounded table near the door, I dropped my bag by the matching chair and wiggled out of my dusty dress, draping it over the back of the chair to avoid more wrinkles. Rooting my spare dress out of the bag and shrugging it on, I found my plain hearthside bed and wriggled into it, curling up under the warm covers and tucking my extremities close to each other to spread the warmth. The last thing I saw as my eyelids drooped shut was the fairy squirming around on my discarded scarf to create a nest for herself, and then I was asleep.

_***Time Skip***_

_Ow._

It was not a good sign that the first thing I registered, even before proper awakening, was an all-over ache.

My forehead scrunched, and I grimaced without even opening my eyes, gingerly trying to roll over. An ebbing tide of pain and soreness washed over all the muscles in my body, tugging at the fibers of my arms and back and _most particularly_ my legs. My grimace deepened, and I opened my eyes to glare balefully at the manifestly innocent undecorated paneling of the opposite wall.

_Owwwwww…_

Okay, maybe that one stationmaster _had_ been right. While technically it was possible to gallop and trot for over half a day, possible without even harming the horse in so much as the short term if one fed the horse enough magic, the rider was going to suffer… _issues_. Namely, regretting every decision that had ever led me to this point, sort of issues.

I wincingly lifted an arm to rub my face. I knew how to fix this: more exercise. Well, technically, either more exercise or a hot bath and a massage, but _I_ knew which of the two I was likely to get at this point, and it was not a backrub by some efficient-fingered fellow human.

_Oh how I wish._

It took a surprisingly hefty amount of willpower to almost _literally_ crawl my way out of bed, cringing with every other muscle shift and regretting my hubris with all of the un-achy portions of my heart. There was a sparkle of magic in my direct peripheral vision, and I presented a strained smile for the fairy as she circled around the side of my head, her eyes enormous and a deep, infinite hypnotic blue that seemed to try and draw me in. She chirped a question and lightly touched my nose with one tiny hand.

"My muscles are sore from riding all that time yesterday." I explained, and she nodded wisely. I brightened a little. "Can you fix that?"

The pixie cocked her head, looking blank, and chirped curiously once again. A sweatdrop beaded at the back of my head.

"You have no idea what muscle soreness means, do you?"

The fairy nodded gleefully and closed her enormous eyes to grin. It only made sense, I supposed: pixies weren't mortal, and therefore unfairly not subjected to the rigors and soreness of mortal problems. The only problem that seemed to affect them, aside from magic and its related issues, was weather and its subsequent temperature changes.

I tried not to be briefly overcome by insane, seething jealousy.

Yawning again, I covered my mouth with one hand before glancing around the room. The curtains were drawn over the windows, and they were thick dark wool, so it was hard to tell precisely what time it was: I mean, there was watery sunlight shining along the bottom, so it was during the day at…some point…but there was a lot of _day_ , in the day.

I glanced at the fairy. "You know what time it is?"

She chirped and held up a single finger.

"One in the afternoon?"

She nodded, and I grimaced again, this time in no relation to my aching, jelly-like legs. I'd slept nearly the whole clock around.

Oh well.

Fluttering my fingers at the pixie in thanks to send a ribbon of raw magic her way, hearing her squeal gleefully and devour it, I then grabbed my hairbrush and began gingerly working it through my snarled hair, thinking hard. I could probably still get in a late lunch or early tea, so at least I would have food before I set out to find the Black Dog. It would be best to work my invocation at night, not just for thematic appropriateness, but also for ritual purposes. The Black Dog in this area was, allegedly, benevolent, but Black Dogs as a species were generally malevolent, which meant that this one was going to be borderline on the area of black and white magic. Depending on where the borderline was and how it applied to the creature's temperament, I would have to add in some extra protections and coercions into my summoning.

Best case, of course, would be a quietly friendly member of the species, one whom I could merely give basic directions to and provide the power to bust down any wards the necromancer set up. Worst-case would be a barely-tractable unholy force of supernatural fury that I would have to manhandle in the right direction, then set free and ward _myself_ against, just in case it came sniffing back for another magician to take out. The most _likely_ case, of course, was somewhere between those two extremes.

But to make that call, I would need information, and as I had recently learned, the best place to get information in Britain was a pub. After getting some much-needed food in my belly, I could lurk around the fringes of the local bars and gently nudge conversation in the direction of their local ghost legends for the remainder of the day, then double back to the hotel for my meager supplies, and then totter out after the fairy as I used both her keen supernatural senses and the local lore to direct me towards the easiest spot to summon the dog.

But first things first…I needed to complete my morning exercises.

I winced and made a face as I gingerly took a pushup position, the fairy chirping in concern as my sore muscles clenched and stretched.

This was going to take a while.

__

_***Time Skip***_

First very not fun thing about lurking in a bar, you had to buy a drink to keep yourself from looking either desperately suspicious or there only to hook up with the nearest guy. Neither option suited me, so I mumbled out an order for what eventually turned out to be some very mediocre wine and _lurked_ in my chosen corner, scanning the few other customers. It'd taken over an hour to work through my full routine, and then another forty minutes for lunch/tea, so it was nearing three in the afternoon, and most people seemed to be at work rather than in a pub.

Second very not fun thing about lurking in a bar, it was a public place with more than two people, and thus trying to monopolize the conversation in _any_ direction, however subtly, was rather frowned upon. My fumbling attempts had garnered plenty of odd looks already, and I was more than willing to stew and let the conversation slip into different directions as I took a few tiny sips of my wine between long pauses –after all, it would be the absolute _pinnacle_ of idiocy to attempt any kind of magic whatsoever when tipsy or, god forbid, drunk, and I had a number of other bars to visit.

Eventually, as I bounced around town, I did gather a few scraps. Apparently this dog was referred to as the Gurt Black Dog, and it was seen as highly protective and beneficial to the people around here, although its _actual_ appearances and aid seemed limited to helping a few errant shepherds home of a dangerously cold evening (mimicking the feel of their own dogs as the shepherds laid a hand on its neck or back, then vanishing ominously into the fog the moment they got home and spied the _actual_ dog inside) and allegedly watching over the children as they played in the nearby Quantock Hills, just west of the town.

In fact, the Quantock Hills got mentioned quite a bit.

So it was no surprise later that evening, as I wrapped my coat and scarf resolutely around myself, black cloak atop all that, and headed out with my pockets stuffed with the few magical tools I actually _did_ have that might help in this task –a scrap of paper with the few particulars of the necromancer I knew, some lucifer matches, a pack of unused white votive candles, and a stick of plain white chalk– that the fairy nervously fluttering along the frost-hardened trail was leading me west.

I was actually _walking_ the path for three reasons: one, my muscles _still_ hurt, and some more exercise would do them no harm, and hopefully stretch and relax them out enough that I'd be able to go to bed tonight and wake up in the morning _without_ my whole body cramping up in protest. Two, I was going to be dealing with a potentially aggressive supernatural creature, and I didn't want to have to deal with Dämon's inevitable burst of panic, however short, while still defending myself from the dog.

Third, it was a fucking _ghost dog_ , and Dämon wouldn't have a prayer of being able to outrun it, should things go horribly wrong. Granted, I would probably die even faster afoot, but at least I had the common decency not to doom my horse because of _my_ stupid decisions.

There was no sound: night birds were usually silent anyway, day birds asleep, and nothing was abroad on this frigid night if it could help it. At least the air was clear, and the starlight was enough to mostly see by; when the moon came up I would be able to see quite clearly indeed, probably because my eyes would have already adjusted to the darkness.

For now, the only sound was my crunching footsteps and the wind as it rustled softly through the bare branches of the scrub bushes and oak trees in this little valley, with rocky hills looming up and pressing close on both sides, cutting me off in a steep slope up ahead. I almost wished the wind was louder: this soft, whispery sound gliding through the branches was almost worse than a high, keening whistle. It was so…ominous. A sharp wind indicated _movement_ , something _happening_ , a pitch building to a crescendo, so that every nerve was wire-tight but prepared for something to happen _soon_ : this gentle breeze oozed and ebbed softly among the winter woods, sometimes silent, occasionally picking up as a few dead leaves hissed and fluttered on their branches, and it was a constant presence in the back of my head, looming. It promised that something _may_ happen, and worse, that perhaps something had _already_ happened, something to warp the subtle threads of the world and reality as I knew it and now a spectral presence consumed the entirety of these hillsides, roaming at will, as constant and pervasive as the wind moaning softly over the icy landscape.

I gulped and wound my warm orange scarf a little tighter, hunching my head into my shoulders and resolutely pushed forward, the cape of my hooded cloak fluttering behind me.

It also didn't help that I actually had no idea what the Black Dog actually _was_ , which was deeply unusual when it came to magical creatures. The local ones –demons, Reapers, I knew where they came from and, in general, how they were made– and ones that seemed to permeate multiple worlds, like the fairies, well, I knew what they were from Britain.

Problem was, _he_ didn't know what Black Dogs were either, and he was the _fucking personification of the land they were tied to_ , not to mention a magician nearly a thousand years old. Britain had made a face and mumbled something to the tune of "I don't know, and don't _want_ to know" when I'd asked about it after running across Black Dogs in one of his books: this led me to believe that it was either something so incomprehensibly horrific that he didn't want to talk about it (rare), or it was something Fae-related. Possibly both. Fae were tricksy and even worse than the original Grimm's fairytales might suggest.

Then again, they might just be more… _persnickety_ relatives of Church Grim, supernatural dogs that guarded a local Christian church by virtue of, most likely, being the ghosts of dogs buried alive under a foundation cornerstone because of the custom meant to ensure that very fate. A dog a full seven feet long had been unearthed from an ancient abbey in Suffolk, the undisputed stomping ground of the Black Shuck.

So I was…nervous, going forward, even though I was reasonably assured that this Black Dog, at least, was safe. Because that same book I read that introduced the idea also gave examples, and none of them were pleasant.

__

_"All down the church in midst of fire, the hellish monster flew, and, passing onward to the quire, he many people slew."_

The accounts were headed by the mention of one of the most infamous, the aforementioned Black Shuck, an omen of doom and death that had once burst into a church accompanied by thunder and galloped down the middle of a congregation of terrified witnesses, killing a man and a boy right before the altar and leaving the nearer of them "shriveled like a purse", finally causing the steeple to come crashing down through the roof before leaving, with scorch marks on the door to tell of its presence, marks which allegedly lingered even into the modern era. The entry continued to describe how the Shuck arrived wreathed in mist, how it had a singular burning eye in the center of its head, how although its howling made your blood run cold and was in itself an omen of death and disaster, it made no noise as it walked, not even the sound of a single footfall.

And that was just one example. Black Dogs walked in churchyards, they appeared on the sites of executed criminals accompanied by the sound of screeching, dragging rusty chains, they appeared on lonely roads that other dogs, and people, mysteriously disappeared on, haunting crossroads and attacking anyone who passed by: they appeared intangibly, fading out behind and fading in ahead as they lolloped along beside a victim, and only when one spoke to it or tried to attack would it be given power over them: they galloped shrieking through the night at the heels of some ghostly Wild Hunt or amongst a pack of their own, headless, with the heads of men, and their names were as various as their methods: Yeth Hound, Skriker, Padfoot, Hairy Jack, Gabriel Hounds, Sky Yelpers, Black Shuck, Black Dog of such-and-so-a-location, Barghest, Barguest. They glowed with foxfire, they were impenetrable black, they had a single blazing eye, they had two, incandescent with a fiendish light.

Sure, there were also legends of _benevolent_ and _helpful_ Black Dogs, but there _were_ a lot less of them, and it was a lot harder to remember those on this cold, misty, wind-filled night.

_Wait…_

Mist?

I swallowed hard and drew my coat and cloak tighter around myself. The night had been sparkling and clear when I set out. Now there was a milky haze around my heat, billowing and eddying to my long strides as I involuntarily picked up the pace _just_ a little.

One of the most unfair things about suddenly being jolted into high tension was that your body reacted on fight-or-flight, which meant all of your senses automatically pricked up and strained to their limits, trying to take in every _scrap_ of information about your environment that they could so _you_ could react in time and in the right direction to avoid the hypothetical predator about to pounce and drag you away from the safety of your fellow Neanderthals.

When you were probably being followed by a supernatural creature that didn't make a sound as it moved, having your ears hypersensitive to every little rasp of dried leaves and _hush_ of wind-blown snow but _still_ hearing nothing blatantly untoward was not exactly helpful in lessening your tension. The lack of noise was a noise and a warning in and of itself, if you can understand. After all, how did one decipher whether the silence was normal silence or the silence of a spectral hound padding ominously along behind you, slowly catching up, slowly drawing nearer…

My neck prickled, and I swallowed hard, flicking my eyes up towards the fairy fluttering along the path ahead. She looked just as nervous as I felt, and worse, was looking from side to side around the path and hovering uncertainly, as though even she couldn't exactly tell where the something –if the _something_ was out there– was, or where it was coming from, or even if it was present.

"You…" There was a lump in my throat, and I cleared my throat to clear it. "Hey, fairy, you don't have to stay to help me find it, you can…you can go back to town."

 _Don't leave me alone out here!_ screamed the clenched knot of fear in my chest, even though I had to offer her an out just from pure common decency. She was so small, so vulnerable by magic standards: I couldn't expose her to danger, I had a responsibility. _Or worse, don't leave me out here with something else, even if it **is** supposed to be nice!_

The fairy chirped and shook her head, though she was quivering in every tiny inch of her. She drifted closer and squirmed under my scarf for comfort, clutching at my loose hair like a child with a blanket as she shook on her perch. I lifted a hand to my throat protectively, and then slowly turned around.

There was nothing there. Just more mist.

My chest, my torso, I think my whole _body_ shuddered with the force of my shaky, sighed exhale of relief, dropping the hand protectively cupping the fairy before bobbing it back up again to run nervously through my hair in self-soothing reflex.

_Jesus, this walk is going to kill me._

I slowly looked over my shoulder and turned again, prepared for a classic horror movie jumpscare, but there was still only the milky mist, thickening and growing worse than ever. My shoulders sagged a little, and I squinted as I looked up the path, the clear space through the trees blurring a little in the sudden fog.

"Think we should keep going until we hit the moor up the hill?"

The fairy squeaked a tiny, scared affirmative and tugged encouragingly on the strand of hair she still clutched like a security blankie.

Nodding to her and myself, I mentally rolled up my sleeves, and with one last gulp, began to trudge onwards through the mist, my nerves prickling as the cloudy fog swirled around my calves and ankles and flowed with the eddying of my hooded cloak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 1.16 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 16th, 2019, 10.28 AM USA Central Time


	25. That Butler, Baiting

_Arya's POV:_

As I always did when I was nervous, I started rambling aloud to myself, about halfway up the steep path that led to the moor by my count.

"Oh, sure, makes _lovely_ sense when you're at home in London in a nice warm brightly-lit house, _'I'll just pop right over to the spooky winter woods at **night** and summon a **ghost dog** , nope, no siree, can't see no problems here,'_ can't have just waited until the sun was up, _oh_ no, I had to go out and get the _authentic_ experience, fuckin' stupid decision that's probably gonna get me-"

_Awooooooooooooo!_

All the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up on end. No use telling myself that was the howl of a normal dog locked in a farmhouse or some shit: there was a reverberation to it, an echo and re-echo, a haunting note to the cry that was like the wail of a ghost in a tomb.

The hollow echo of the grave, born of a creature beyond it.

Instinctively, since I _was_ up against something of a precipice, I plastered myself against the densely-packed soil of the nearest flat part of the hill, my heart pounding against my ribs. There was something in that long, wailing cry that sparked a primeval fear in me, the urge to run and flee and _hide_ like a frightened animal.

Especially since I was all alone in the woods with only a fairy and a ghost dog for company. Fuck, I hadn't even had to _summon_ it!

There were still no sounds, not after that drawn-out howl had ended, and my pulse raced as I imagined a hulking black dog thudding through the mist that swamped me, the hill, _everything_ , blank eyes without pupils swirling with fire as it galloped soundlessly towards my location along the path.

_Okay. Bad mental image. Stop thinking about that unless you want to give yourself a heart attack._

Breathe, breathe. I was in _control_ here. I was a magician. I could wall myself away from the Black Dog, I could protect myself, I could probably even _control_ it. There was absolutely nothing to be scared of here. _I_ was running the show.

That didn't make my jump any smaller when I felt cold, oily fur slide under my right hand.

" _Je_ -"

I bit off the exclamation as I jerked away, heart pounding. A number of supernatural creatures disliked the invocation of Christian iconography, whether due to grudges and resentment built up by being pagan creatures from cultures conquered and persecuted by Christians of all stamps, or because they toed the line of innate malevolence to such an extent invoking holy powers of _any_ religion actually stung them.

Before me on the path, angled so that it stood roughly between me and the edge, was an absolutely enormous black dog. It's head was about level with my sternum, and it was probably longer than I was tall, perhaps even _without_ the tail. I wasn't good with dog breeds, so I couldn't exactly identify it on the spot, but the slightly shaggy pelt, blocky head, and heavy jowls suggested something from the mastiff or St. Bernard family, perhaps.

The dog was also pitch black all over and glowing faintly, not so much that you'd notice immediately, but the outline of its shaggy black fur seemed to be rimmed in a faint green phosphorescence, and when it turned its head to me, the eyes glowed a solid, eerie yellow. I also couldn't help but notice that what teeth I could see in its closed mouth were very sharp.

The Black Dog _seemed_ to have slunk up beside me and pushed under my hand, letting my fingers glide briefly through its neck, scruff, and shoulder-fur before I jerked them away and it continued forward, blocking me off from the open air running along the path. If I looked at this one way, that meant it was physically interspersing itself between me and the danger of a fall, which was a good sign.

"Gurt Black Dog?" I asked after a dry swallow, and the dog rumbled low in its throat without looking away from me or blinking. It wasn't an angry or aggressive sound, so I guessed it had been in the affirmative. I _hoped_ it was, at least. "I, um…need your help. I'm not here to, to steal your power or whatever else those other corrupt magicians in this world do: actually, I'm asking you to help me destroy one, an evil magician that is. Will you help me?"

The dog tilted its head slightly to one side, still not looking away or blinking. It was slightly unsettling.

"See, he's a necromancer, and-"

A thunderous, _definitely_ aggressive growl ripped from the Black Dog's throat as its head straightened, lips peeling back to reveal an impressive set of daggerlike teeth. It paced several abrupt steps forward, lowering its head to sniff me forcefully all over, starting from the ankles up. I held very, very still as it did, only guessing that the dog was attempting to check me for similar scents of corruption. Was it _smart_ enough to intuit that if I wanted to rid myself of a necromancer, I would've seen him, and would've had at least a tiny trace of his scent on me? Or was it just instinctively checking for danger, having recognized an inimical human word? There was definitely enough intelligence in there to recognize and respond to a word, that was for sure, but I didn't know how _much_ more it had, if any. And by definition, magical creatures didn't think like humans. Sure, some were _smart_ , plenty smart, as heralded by the wealth of European legends about devious Fae, but they just didn't _think_ in the same ways that people did. Supernatural creatures were nonsensical, flighty, focused strangely, and at the very best they just plain didn't see the world in the same ways –literally– and thus followed completely alien patterns of thought.

The dog didn't even have to lean up that far to sniff at my shoulders and neck, sneezing lightly when its nose brushed over the place the fairy was hid in my scarf. She squeaked nervously and cuddled closer to my bare skin, but the dog only snuffled once and shook its head before moving on, not even paying attention as I was given a thorough going-over. I swallowed nervously as the dog stepped away and relaxed back down again, lips still curled back over its teeth a little, but not growling, not yet.

"So, um…" I wasn't sure of how to communicate my desires, or ensure that it was actually, y'know, something the Black Dog would _do_. "We good?"

The dog whuffed quietly. I was going to pray very hard and take that as a yes.

"Right, okay, so I, um…" My mind drifted: the unblinking stare the dog was bending on me, the pea-soup mist surrounding us, the frigid February night in the gloomy outdoors, it was all conspiring to distract and frighten me.

 _Focus, focus._ I inhaled sharply and closed my eyes, before opening them again. _Remember what Britain would do in this scenario._

"There's a necromancer in London." I said as firmly as I dared, looking directly at the dog. "At the very least, I saw him in London, in a bookstore for magical tomes." I wiggled the scrap of paper out of my pocket and squinted at it in the faint, fog-diffused moonlight. "He's a human male, closer to grave than cradle, with black hair and an old scar across his face. On the back of his neck is a skeletal tattoo inked in black and blue. He smells of rotting flesh and the dead. Can you enter London to find him?"

The dog's head bobbed slightly in what I was going to assume was a nod.

"Once you find him, can you kill him?"

The Black Dog dropped its head and whined a little, uncertainly.

"Will you be able to if I feed you enough magic?"

The dog's ears pricked up, and it looked at me again.

"Okay, good. If we begin tonight, how many more times must I come to this place to feed you before you can kill the necromancer?"

The dog considered that a moment, then whuffed softly and scraped its left paw against the ground soundlessly. I watched as the velvety paw tapped the frozen earth once, twice, and then was still.

"Two nights?" I guessed, and it whuffed again.

I nodded slowly. "Alright then…let's just get a pentacle started, and I can start feeding you power. Okay?" I asked, dipping a hand into my pockets for the votive candles.

The dog shook its ruff and then primly sat down on the road, front paws neatly planted in front of itself as it watched me expectantly.

__

_***Time Skip***_

I glared at the bright sunlight streaming through the window of my hotel room, and then petulantly rolled to the other side of the bed. What I did with the Black Dog had been different than what other, older, _better_ magicians would do: as I may have mentioned a time or two, I had only the rudimentary basics of magic down pat, and as such, the only things I could really _reliably_ do was manipulate raw magical energy –the most basic of basic stepping stones when it came to magic– and conjure up a flat glowing wall as a ward impervious to both magical _and_ physical force. While another magician would've been able to lay out a complex pentacle to draw in and transfer the _exact_ amounts of requisite magic, I had to do everything by hand, so to speak, with a plain pentacle lined with the few battery-runes I knew. This acted like a clumsy magnet to draw in the ambient magical force of the area and condense it into a form the Black Dog could use, however, the method I was using was limited by both my stamina –as I needed to control the inflow of magic– and the fact that I was spending almost half the energy I took in to metaphysically sweep away my footprints, since it was generally the best idea to keep one's magical signature as small and subtle as possible.

To put it simply, where other magicians could use a hypodermic needle to drain the exact amount they needed and leave everything as undisturbed as possible, I was putting a suction cup on an open wound and physically _pumping_ the blood out, then going back in and suturing the small wound shut, all under a time limit. It was clumsy and inefficient, but it was the best I could do, even though it exhausted me.

Silver lining, I supposed, I was getting better at manipulating raw magic. It was energy just like any other kind of power, after all, and therefore I could get concrete results when I channeled it, especially towards other creatures. Towards magical creatures, it was a reward, and if I imbued the power with a _purpose_ , like to energize, all I had to do was direct it toward Dämon, and he would seamlessly absorb it as the _magical_ power was converted into _physical_ energy and stamina. (I wasn't quite sure _how_ the conversion worked exactly, but I wasn't about to argue that point.)

Since I had a scheduled appointment with the Gurt Black Dog again tonight, I figured my day would be best spent in more research in the magic book I brought with me about summoning rituals and related spells, and resolved to winkle it out of my bag just after I finished my morning exercises and breakfast.

So thinking, I rolled out of bed and started in on my morning exercise, twisting a little more carefully than usual to avoid the slight grit on the floor. For the first time since the day before yesterday, I was alone, the fairy having puffed out of existence and gone back to wherever she'd come from when I'd beckoned her in with magic the moment I got back to the hotel last night. It was a bit…weird, to be all by myself. For the past seven-eight months, I'd always been with someone else, or at the very least had another person I knew (as enemy or friend) in the building. This would be the third day where I was technically all by myself, as pixies were more familiars and mascots than actual deeply-intelligent beings one could hold a conversation with.

It was…weird. Weirdly independent. It gave me an odd feeling. I could go anywhere and do anything and not answer to anyone but myself, which was decidedly interesting, and most likely fun (since I planned to wander around the town today between book study and just soak in the living history), but it was still…new. All that sudden freedom was a bit jarring to notice.

Oh well.

I grabbed the book and brought it with me down to breakfast, maneuvering bites of oatmeal and fruit between turning the pages, soaking in information. While the Gurt Black Dog's influence over this town and, most likely, the Quantock Hills in paticular, was so strong that it could manifest even to non-magicians and come when it sensed a magician in proximity, without even the need to _be_ summoned, it would still behoove me to study such methods intently, especially since this book would probably have at least one or two strengthening spells tucked away near the rituals, since some creatures _always_ needed to be pumped up when they came through the Veil.

I crunched a piece of toast and turned the page. Creatures like that were usually the sort of "screaming abominations slipping through the cracks of reality to lay waste to mankind through madness and despair" Lovecraftian type, but hey, it was the structure that counted, and I was lacking a solid amount of that. I could probably splurge on a phone call or text to Britain sometime soon, just to tell him of my progress.

The day proceeded lazily apace. I managed to get in some solid study on the summoning book, delight in the Victorian byplay, and even admire the rustic scenery before I headed back out to the rocky hills, draped in my hooded cloak and bundled up in coat, scarf, and mittens underneath. The knowledge that I was also (most likely) dodging the whole huge mess of the Circus Arc was like frosting atop that particular lazy-day cake, so I was enjoying myself rather immensely.

There wasn't anything I held against the Circus Arc in _particular_ –the Atlantic/Luxury Liner Arc was probably the most dangerous in the manga so far– but the fact remained that I had just spent a good six months running frantically from one psychopath to another dangerous situation to yet another fight, and I would very much like a break, please. If that break involved summoning and communing with a quasi-dangerous hellhound, I'd take that over super-athletic circus-trick murderers any day, thank you very much.

I found the Black Dog halfway up the same path, in roughly the same place, and settled down to feed it a bit more power, noticing with trepidation as I did that it was even…bigger. And the teeth were longer.

_Well, that **is** what I wanted…I hope._

My skin was crawling by the time I walked back down the path later that evening, just shy of midnight, seeing the horse-sized ghostly dog pad off in another direction through the mist without a sound.

_And I hope I know what I'm doing here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 1.35 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 16th, 2019, 10.20 AM USA Central Time


	26. That Butler, Seeking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Higurashi is an awesome anime and you all should watch it. Best horror series ever 100/10.

_Arya's POV:_

Exhaling, I chaffed my upper arms underneath my coat, the warm snuggliness of the thick fabric not working its usual magic as my breath billowed out into the frosty night air. Tonight was going to be the riskiest night: I'd given the Black Dog its latest and final bundle of magic, and even now, presumably, it was going out hunting for a certain necromancer, all the way out in London.

At least, I _hoped_ it was out in London. There was really no way to tell if the ghostly, now-enormous hound was off doing my bidding or merely lurking nearby in the swirling mist, waiting for an opportunity to pounce on _me_.

That was the thing: not knowing how Black Dogs really worked, I had no idea if –for example– they were _always_ malevolent, and only those with little magic behaved docilely, with an increase in power triggering the behavioral transition from "spooky but fundamentally benevolent" to "terrifying and malicious omen of doom and death."

And, you know, I'd just spent three solid nights feeding this particular Black Dog a whole hell of a lot of magic.

And to be brutally honest, I wasn't exactly prepared to fight it out with the Black Dog even in its _normal_ state –as a novice, barely more than an apprentice, my grasp of magical combat was practically nonexistent. I had a gun, but I couldn't fire it very well, and a knife, but fat lot of good that would do against an incorporeal hound. So, looking at this from the outside, I was taking a pretty big risk contacting the Gurt Black Dog at all, never mind using it as I had, and never mind daring to tentatively _command_ it…which was also why I wasn't at all sure it was actually doing as I said. Sure, a more powerful magician could put a geas of some sort on the Black Dog, a magical compulsion to do my will that lasted only as long as whatever pact we had brokered, but I didn't know _nearly_ enough to attempt such a thing, and trying to do so might actually aggravate the Black Dog to attack me, since magicians in this world would probably use such things exclusively to enslave magical creatures and whatnot.

So I was stuck waiting on the icy early-spring/late-winter moor, shivering, and waiting for the ghost dog to bring me some sort of proof that the necromancer was dead. I just hoped it wouldn't be some metaphysical ball of his soul or something…though that seemed likely. After all, how else would you ensure a magician's death to someone else?

For the first few hours, I had busied myself with tromping back and forth around the small patch of bare ground just off the path, crunching down the crusty layer of snow still left over from the mild English winter, but when my open space became a frozen, slushy mix of ice and slick pounded-down snow I had to stop. Now I was just trying to keep myself warm, since I had been out here for far longer than any reasonable person should be, even in a thick winter coat, scarf, and mittens, with the addition of a long black hooded cloak over all. The chill of the cold February night was biting into me with a vengeance, and I was pacing aimlessly back and forth on the packed-earth path a little just for warmth now, not anxiousness. After all, pacing wasn't going to make the Black Dog hunt any faster, it was just going to occupy me until it was done.

I hummed a little from the _Higurashi_ opening, then giggled half-hysterically behind my scarf.

_I turn around, sensing a presence, but who's behind me now...?  
I sink my claws in the darkness, and tear apart the night_

Yeah, not the best lyrics to be thinking off when you very well _could_ be pounced on from behind by a monstrous Black Dog at any moment. Nor how Hinamizawa Syndrome was always triggered by the sound of an extra footstep trailing invisibly behind oneself…

_No no no no, shut up, stop it, be **quiet** , brain! Stop thinking about horror anime! Think of fluff! Tooth-rotting fluff! Hetalia sleepover fluff!_

I smacked my cheeks with my mittened hands, trying to forcibly jolt my brain into a more soothing frame of thought. _Why_ did one always think of the spookiest options to literally _everything_ when one was already in a spooky, nigh-on-ominous situation? Was it just thought association? Seeing dark and scary things and thinking of similar dark and scary things? Or was it your brain trying to fucking self-sabotage?!

Whatever it was, it _ticked me off_. And was very much not appreciated.

My shuffling paces and huffing breathes were interrupted by a…a _sound_. It wasn't quite a howl, more like, like the _echo_ of one, floating thin and mournful and barely-there on the cold night air. It rang faintly between my ears, a whisper of psychic frisson peeling through the hills, forest, and moor, like hooks threaded through my mind and tugging my attention backwards, towards that ringing howl that ghosted along the edge of being inaudible to both body and mind.

Keen intuition told me the Black Dog was coming.

I looked around, a little confused and uncertain, since experience had told me night before last that the Black Dog _could_ howl audibly –and also it was very hard to tell from which direction that not-quite-a-sound had come from. Making a guess, I turned in the direction I supposed London was, swallowing hard and feeling the frosty night air tickle the back of my throat a little bit. It was the do or die moment right now…hopefully not literally.

An odd sound scuffed and slithered its way through the mist-shrouded ground towards me: the Gurt Black Dog was preternaturally silent, and yet, there was a sort of sliding, crunching, rustling movement slowly but inexorably crawling its way towards me.

I gulped and took a step back from the sound, sidestepping a little to stay on the path, and reached for my knife beneath my cloak.

Two things were answered in one as the Gurt Black Dog oozed its way through the bushes on the path up ahead and a bit to my right, slithering through the physical shrubbery like the phantom it was –much smaller, and dimmer somehow, than when I had last seen it.

It didn't howl like it had before because there was a booted ankle in its mouth, and the slithering, scraping sound was the very-incorporeal dog dragging a very-physical corpse along the ground.

I swallowed even harder as the Black Dog trotted up to me and dropped the ankle from its mouth. The necromancer's corpse was _just barely_ recognizable by the greasy black hair and what remained of the face: apparently, the Gurt Black Dog had killed him by either leaping upon him or ripping his throat out…or just–

My head suddenly twinged, and I gasped and covered my eyes with one hand. Foggy images crowded into my vision as my skull seemed likely to split with the pain of having such alien power clumsily rooting around and shoving such memories into my mind in lieu of words: _running_ and _biting_ and _grabbing_ , and **_dragging_** , dragging a screaming, thrashing body out from a building, whisking him out from a dusty wooden room shrouded in cobwebs and bottles of spirits and other noxious things and _dragging_ him down a set of rickety wooden stairs as he flung magic that glanced off shoulders placed in ways I couldn't comprehend, and then galloping headlong through the cobblestone streets of a darkened London, bone and flesh crunching under teeth I didn't have as tastes I didn't have the experience to understand burst on my tongue, screams trailing behind me as the man flailed and writhed, leaving a dark, snail-like trail of blood and ichor on the frozen earth as I streaked across the frosty fields of England, the screams slowly fading away into the meaty thump of a pulverized sack of flesh bumping against stones and ice.

My stomach lurched as I came out of the vision the Black Dog had forced into my mind, and I swallowed rapidly, trying to quell my gorge as I stared into the unblinking yellow eyes of the Gurt Black Dog.

"Um, thanks, that's…great. Just what I wanted. Well done." I croaked after a few moments.

_I think I need to find a bush to go throw up in._

The dog whuffed quietly through its nose and lowered its head, turning away from me and trotting placidly off into the mist.

_Wait. Is that-_

I blinked and looked from the disappearing dog to the corpse at my feet, confused.

_Is that seriously-_

"Um…" I gulped tentatively, uncertain of whether or not I wanted to attract the man-dragging dog's attention then blinked again, my mouth falling open in shock, as the mist around me slowly began to fade, revealing a calm, clear February night.

_Is that seriously fucking it?!_

"Dude!" I whisper-squeaked, looking indignantly at the corpse at my feet, nausea swallowed by nonplussed outrage. "What the fuck am I-?!"

_Well, I suppose it would be worse if the dog just **ate** the damn bastard._

I sighed and pulled back the hood of my cloak to scratch at my hair, humming fretfully and trying to think of what to do now. I didn't want to spook the local yokels with a dead dude on a path, especially since the Black Dog would've almost certainly been invisible to the non-magical populace as it dragged this man screaming through the streets of London (that was _not_ a headline I was looking forward to, on account of Sebastian and Ciel lecturing me). Urban legends were made from less, and given as such things sometimes had an effect on the local supernatural beasties, I didn't want to inadvertently turn the Gurt Black Dog that guarded children and wayward shepherds into a…well, into all the other legends of Black Dogs.

_Maybe I can burn it? Better make sure to burn the whole thing, though, cause I feel like a charred skeleton would only enhance the spooky ending to that story…_

_***Time Skip***_

One burned corpse and three trips to hurl into a bush later (in other news, vomit made a very _peculiar_ scent when burned, since I didn't want to leave any evidence of myself about) I had just cleaned up my very first body. Oh joy.

Since, quite frankly, Bridgwater had deeply unsettled me in the past few hours, I only returned to town to grab Dämon and check out of the hotel before we were galloping down the road, providentially, not the same one the Black Dog had dragged the necromancer down. Actually, if the horrific memories I was trying very hard to block out were true, the dog had bypassed most roads entirely, which only made sense, both in the idea that it was probably _trying_ to shred the necromancer like some gourmet cheese and also because it was a fucking _dog_ with its own ideas of navigation and how to get across cross-country areas.

But anyways.

It was another long, tiring journey across the English countryside, not made any less difficult by the cold and darkness of night, since I was unwilling to spend another moment in the area that held such skin-crawlingly unsettling memories for me. If Ciel and Sebastian still hadn't shown up for the Circus Arc by the time I got there, I planned to just hang around with Soma and Agni and study my newly-acquired magic books. If it was the middle of the arc…I suppose it would technically be safe for me to cower in a corner of the townhouse and blissfully pretend I didn't know anything about anything.

Best case, the whole arc was finished, and I could go back home to the manor and study in peace until the Murder Arc happened.

I wasn't betting on that though.

Since I was galloping (hypothetically, it was usually galloping interspersed with trotting and walking, more for my benefit than Dämon's) the whole night through, with only a pause to admire the sunset somewhere around what a signpost told me was Slough, and another to snatch a bite to eat from a roadside inn, I wearily trotted Dämon into the London neighborhood by Ciel's townhouse sometime at the unfashionably early hour of eight in the morning. A bleary-eyed Agni opened the door to admit me, and we exchanged a drowsy flurry of polite greetings before I gratefully took his offer to stable Dämon and tottered up the stairs, collapsing in my book-strewn room for a nap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 1.49 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 16th, 2019, 10.24 AM USA Central Time


	27. That Butler, Evasion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deserving an honorable mention because I live here, the mill explosion Bardroy talks about before he uses flour to blow up the kitchen was an ACTUAL THING that happened in Minneapolis, Minnesota way back in the day, and I know this because the rubble, ruins, and shell of the original building are now a museum that I have visited at least twice, and I get to see that selfsame building about once a year, every time my grandfather brings my family to the Guthrie Theatre right next door to watch a play. I can't tell you how much I geeked out when Black Butler mentioned that bit of my local childhood, I was like an excited puppy.
> 
> Also, I write Grell as male because, despite his repeated flirtatious comments and self-alleged feminine identity, he...doesn't really seem to care when other people label him as male, or even bother to correct them half the time. He also doesn't dress in feminine clothing despite having every opportunity, as an ordinarily-invisible Grim Reaper unbound by Victorian society laws, to do so. Therefore, I identify him more as a transvestite than actually transsexual or transgender, which is also how I write him.
> 
> Other interpretations, of course, are equally and perfectly valid, but this is what I'm dealing with.

_Arya's POV:_

When I again regained consciousness, my first course of action was to pounce on my apocalypse bag and rip open the nearest container of food. Once I had sated the screaming void in my abdomen, I meticulously tidied up any spare crumbs I could possibly find, since in this bygone age where vacuum cleaners were but a distant pipe dream, mice and other small vermin ran rampant, and it was generally appreciated if everyone in the building did their best to thwart their rampancy whenever they could. Since I was not at all interested in having a beetle scuttle over my face in the middle of the night or some shit –a tale Mey-rin vividly enjoyed recalling to me about her early days in our room, for some godforsaken reason– I was an eager participant in this ritual.

My next order of business was to find Soma and/or Agni and find out the whereabouts and whenabouts (which should really, really be a word on _Doctor Who_ ) of Ciel and Sebastian. If they had yet to arrive at the townhouse, well and good, I would huddle in a convenient corner until the Circus Arc was over. If they were mid-arc, I would find some equally convenient excuse to huddle in said corner, then make off for the estate when the dust had settled.

The best-case scenario, of course, would be everything being already done and I could just go home.

"Oh?" Soma asked through a mouthful of naan bread. "Ciel left already. We gave him your letter, did we not?"

He looked to Agni, who was lurking helpfully around the sideboard, for confirmation. The taller man smiled and placed a hand over his heart, bowing slightly to me.

"Indeed we did, miss. I myself personally placed your letter into his hands." he agreed, and I let out a low, slow breath of relief.

"Thanks, guys. If that's the case, uh, I'd best get back to the manor, so I can start on my debriefing…or whatever." I mumbled that last bit, and fended off a few polite offers to help me pack, since I did _not_ want either Soma or Agni to see me stuffing what amounted to a small mobile library into my average-sized bag.

Thankfully, both Soma and Agni seemed too well-trained in Victorian manners to invade a woman's room for any reason, including cleaning, even when she was absent from the house, and my effects were undisturbed.

Reaching nearly shoulder-deep into my bag (which I'm sure made for an amusing mental image) I fished around for the twine I had secreted in here a while back. My apocalypse bag was originally just that –a not-quite-jokingly assembled emergency rucksack for a hypothetical disaster scenario, but since I'd had it when transported to one world, and my teacher had cast an infinite-expansion spell on the inside, my apocalypse bag had since become something between a suitcase and a traveling knapsack. As such, despite the large amount of clothes and other casual bits and pieces inside, most of it was survival gear –non-perishable food items and bottled water, a camping knife, a signal mirror, and so on, including what I was looking for right now, which was a ball of strong twine that could be hypothetically used for all sorts of nifty shelter-building.

Finally finding it, I pulled the ball out and began gathering up my books, binding them together in stacks of about five (depending on volume thickness) and making sure to leave plenty of slack on the bow-loops of the knots as I lowered them one by one into my bag, since I would need to have some way to pull these _out_ of the bag in the near future and I wasn't at all sure of how much purchase I would get on the sides, and the string itself, of course, was pulled tight to keep the stack together.

With that finished, I grabbed my few other odds and ends and stuffed them in, strapping the satchel Ciel had lent me for my shopping trip under my apocalypse bag and trotting back downstairs with both bags bouncing on my back. Agni had most generously already saddled and bridled Dämon and had him waiting on the street curb, and I spent a few moments in a flurry of cheerful farewells with him and Soma before mounting up, sending Dämon off at a brisk clop along the cobblestone streets. I even turned around in the saddle and waved before they were out of sight, since Dämon and I had enough of each other's measure that he was no longer inclined to test me at every turn.

"Oh!" Soma lowered his hand and blinked, his words going unheard as he turned to Agni. "Do you think we should have told her Ciel is still resting up from his asthma attack in the townhouse?"

"I think she will find out soon." Agni replied with a placid smile. "Besides, I'm sure Sebastian can get a message to her easily enough, and vice versa, should she need to communicate the results of her business trip that urgently."

_***Time Skip***_

I yawned as I sent Dämon cantering over the low slope of the hill in the wood that surrounded the Phantomhive family estate, my eyes drooping. I was looking forward to a nice long sleep, and then reverting my sleep schedule back to normal, which would hopefully get rid of my achy bones and heavy muscles.

The ground rocked, and Dämon threw up his head and shrilled in primal fear as a cloud of smoke and fire belched up from where I definitely remembered the estate to be, rearing and dancing backwards.

_Shit._

I lunged over Dämon's neck, damn near hanging off his shoulders as I whispered urgently soothing things into his ears, petting and stroking him until my prancing horse calmed down, his sides heaving. Carefully, to avoid spooking him again, I dismounted, quickly leading the nervous horse over to a tree right next to the path and knotting his reins securely around a thick branch. If I'd miscalculated the timing of either the plot or myself –which was worrisomely likely– I did not want to have to deal with a panicky horse on top of all else, and he'd be safer away from whatever was going on, in any case.

Once Dämon was taken care of, I pulled up my skirts a little and ran for the distant cloud of billowing smoke, plans and thoughts tumbling through my head. Since whomever had designed this estate had absolutely no fucking idea of reasonable distance management, I had a good long time to turn things over as I got closer to the lawn, panting as I braced myself against a tree right on the very edge. If this was Bardroy blowing up the kitchen as per the usual way of things, then all the Noah's Arc Circus members should be-

"Dead, dead, dead! Oh, this is all so _dreadfully_ boring!"

I froze at the lilting, slightly cracked voice coming from right above me, the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up.

"Why, not even a _sign_ of –oh, why _hello_ there!"

I let out a rather embarrassing squeak as something rapidly snatched me by the ankle and yoinked me up into the very tree I had been standing other, with the culprit revealed to be none other than –as I'd feared– Grell Sutcliff. The red-cloaked Reaper had apparently been perching casually on one of the higher branches as he took notes, his Death Scythe propped blade-down against the trunk and red high heels perfectly braced against the thick branch.

He grinned, baring serrated teeth at me, and I gulped, which was a surprisingly hard prospect when one was being hung upside-down. I blamed it on the dangling ends of the scarf wrapped around my throat, personally.

"My _goodness_ , I had no idea there was a magician attached to the estate~!" Grell cooed, green eyes gleaming, and I shivered and offered what was hopefully an ingraining smile.

"Uh…yeah, that's me."

"Mm~, now what could you _possibly_ be wanting in exchange for being hired by that damn brat?"

"N-nothing…really…" I croaked, my face flushing in the evening cold as all the blood in my body steadily drained downwards towards my dizzy head and shoulders. "Lis'en…can you…flip me over?!"

"Hmm? Oh yes, of course, how _silly_ of me." the red-haired Grim Reaper hummed, grinning coyly, and flicked his wrist, using a surprising amount of strength to flip me over midair, before grabbing me by the collar of my coat instead. I wheezed as he caught me again, my booted feet slamming down and scraping frantically against the chilly branch –which I could only just barely reach with my toes, being as he held me at arm's length– to prop myself up and avoid being inadvertently strangled by the curious Grim Reaper as I instinctively grabbed his wrists.

"Now then," Grell began, his unearthly eyes practically glowing with excitement. "You're a magician, so what do you want with my _dearest_ Bassy?"

"Nothing." I deadpanned, or at least as much as I was able to, balancing on slipping tiptoes and being held up by my throat and whatnot. "I-I'm not interested in him at all, I'm busy with other stuff. Ciel just hired me to help him with his cases."

"Hah!" Grell scoffed, before narrowing his eyes. "The Reaper Divisions have been dealing with _your like_ for quite some time, missy! Always greedy and grasping for more, you magicians!" He grinned wider, showing off every single one of his pointy teeth as his tongue slithered savoringly along his perfectly-applied red lipstick. "Be honest, now: you're here to steal Bassy's power and help that boy welch on his deal, aren't you?"

Oh for Christ's sake. The ways and methodologies of the double-crossing magic-workers in this universe was starting to give me a headache –and if I didn't phrase my next response _very_ carefully, it was about to give me a lot more pain than that.

"If Ciel sold his soul, that's his business." I grunted, shrugging as much as I could and averting my eyes. "He's my boss, he pays me to help him with his cases, and that is _all_ I'm interested in, and _all_ he pays me for, and _all_ I expect to get out of my arrangement here at the estate. _Okay_?"

Grell arched a single brow, looking almost disappointed, and losing his sadistic grin.

Then it made a toothy appearance –and he shoved me backwards, letting go.

I screeched as I fell backwards out of the tree, hearing the ominous sound of a chainsaw revving up above me as the flare of red that was Grell shifted and bloomed against the night.

"You can't fool me, dearie!" the Reaper trilled, jumping out of the tree after me with his Death Scythe cocked high for an overhead blow. "Magicians care about nothing except power and prestige, you know~?"

_Oh shit._

I choked out a cry as I hit the ground, barely having enough time and mental capacity to slam both my hands up, palm outwards, as a magic wall shimmered into existence between me and the descending Reaper.

"Nice try, but that won't work! I _do_ have a Death Scythe, after all!"

_Oh **SHIT**._

With a grinding noise and a few errant sparks, Grell sliced my magic wall in half like a sheet of paper, and I barely had time to roll frantically out of the way before the roaring blade of his chainsaw slammed into the frozen dirt where I had been, the rotating blades spraying out chunks of soil and broken rocks before he yanked it out of the ground.

Standing across the path from the grinning Grim Reaper, I took a moment to inhale carefully, collect my thoughts, and coolly think through all my available options as we faced off against each other, the humming of his chainsaw drowning out all else.

I selected the best option and ran in the opposite direction, towards the manor, with a cackling Grell in hot pursuit.

"Jesus motherfucking shit tits _Christ!"_ I screamed, legs pumping as I fled frantically from the demented Grim Reaper.

What can I say? It wasn't as if I knew any spells that would help me in the immediate moment, other than my wall spell, and Grell had just proved he could handle that easily. I barely knew how to fire the gun at my hip, and bringing a knife to a chainsaw fight was probably even less efficient than bringing a knife to a gunfight. My only real option here was to run as fast and as far as I could and hope Grell would eventually tire of the chase, or his boss would show up and drag him back to the work of collecting souls by the ear.

I was honestly hoping for the second one, as Grell seemed unlikely to lose interest any time soon.

"What kind of swain would allow her man to be _stolen_ and bound by some magician?" Grell cooed as we streaked across the lawn, speeding up as he cocked his chainsaw. "Keep your leeching, greedy hands off my Bassy, wench!"

"I DON'T FUCKING WANT HIM, YOU CAN HAVE THE BASTARD!" I wailed as I desperately increased my pace, turning and flinging another magic wall in his direction, which he dealt with as easily as the first.

"Oh, I wish~! A man, a _bastard_ who can use a woman and toss her aside without a second thought! Those cold eyes of his hide an infernal soul that burns oh-so- _hot_ ~! Ah! I'm burning up just thinking about it!"

"Then keep thinking about it and leave me _alone!_ Or actually do your fucking job!"

If I actually survived tonight, and in many many years, I supposed I would be able to look back on this moment and tell it as an amusing story to my children. From a purely academic standpoint, it _was_ probably pretty funny, with a cackling Grim Reaper spouting threats and lovesick paeans to Sebastian at equal intervals and me swearing an incoherent blue streak as he chased me in a _Looney Tunes_ -esque circle around the Phantomhive manor grounds.

It was less funny in the present moment, when a single misstep would lead to my decapitation via Death Scythe, or some other unpleasantly fatal occurrence.

We'd been at this long enough that my ribs were starting to hurt, my breath aching and rasping in my chest as it billowed out in white clouds before my face, my stamina flagging as tiredness gnawed at my bones. It was also hard to keep up the pace and still avoid tripping and stumbling over the scattered rubble and other miscellaneous bits of destruction from the Noah's Arc Circus visit, but to my dismay, Grell seemed to be coming on as fresh as ever, despite my growing exhaustion.

"What's wrong, dearie? You're _slowing down_ ~" he purred excitedly from behind me, seemingly noticing the same thing I had. "Don't tell me that's all you have, magician?"

I did not have the oxygen to reply with profanity as I so dearly longed to, veering off a little and heading towards the stables as I extended my stride, wheezing in pain as the stitches grew in my side. A yelp was shocked out of me as I tripped down a slope that _definitely_ hadn't been there the last time I was on the estate, tumbling end-over-teakettle downwards over the rubble and broken earth as Grell hurriedly scuffled to a stop on the verge above, barely avoiding sharing my fate.

I rolled to my feet again with a wince at the bottom as, in the corner of my eye, I saw Grell shrug and execute an inhuman leap that carried him down to the bottom of the gulch in a single spring.

"That's not fucking _fair!"_ I wailed, and Grell laughed, holding his chainsaw diagonally across his body as he rushed after me.

"Its impossible to outrun _death_ , missy!" he crooned. "And just as you cannot outrun death, you cannot outrun the Grim Reapers who are its emissaries! We are _inevitable_ , _indomitable_ , and _inescapable_! You cannot distract or disarray a force of nature, after all~!"

I sweatdropped.

"Look, Sebastian's back!" I cried desperately, pointing off into the distance. Grell immediately skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust and whipped around, his free hand going to his long curtain of smooth crimson hair.

"Bassy~? _Oh_ , you've finally returned to me- wait." he choked off as he noticed, even through his dainty librarian's glasses, that there was no one there. "Oh, you wicked, _wicked_ girl! Get back out here!"

Being possessed of a rational mind unclouded by _Looney Tunes_ logic, I stayed huddled behind the low stone wall I had dove behind the second Grell took his eyes off me, shaking and trying very hard not to breathe too loudly.

_Now let's just hope he's as bad at searching as he is at staying focused…_

_***Time Skip***_

I don't know how long I stayed huddled behind my hiding spot, mainly because I had made sure to stay there for at least ten minutes after Grell's colorful language and noises of destruction had faded away, because I was not at all sure that he wouldn't simply lurk somewhere, wait for me to come out, and then leap out of his _own_ hiding place to finish me off.

But when my saddle-sore muscles began to cramp up with my every small shift, I figured it was time to get indoors before I froze to death, and looked at my watch, seeing that a half hour had passed. Cautiously, I peeped my head above the thick wall, my fingers curling over the mortar and stone, and seeing nothing, I wincingly stood up, grimacing and rubbing my lower back as I did. I was sore all over.

With an overabundance of due and proper caution, I began limping back towards where I had left Dämon, plastering myself against bushes and shrubbery and creeping in the shadows whenever I could. The reasoning for this extreme caution was the fact that I didn't want to have to make up any more explanations than I had to, and since I also had a sneaking suspicion that, since he was an entity of death, the other Phantomhive servants couldn't even see Grell unless he made the choice to manifest in a manner palpable to them, I couldn't point fingers at the psycho Reaper as to why I was so deep into estate lands without horse or luggage when I was supposed to be away on a business trip.

Dämon whickered when I finally made it back to him, acting with a flattering amount of happiness at my arrival as he nuzzled at my coat and nudged at my shoulder while I untied him. Then again, that might be because he knew I was leading him back to his warm stable and oats…

I took the interpretation where the evil horse was finally beginning to grow fond of me, and draped myself over his saddle with a groan, trusting that Grell would be too busy _finally_ doing his job to heckle me any more when I rode Dämon back onto the estate.

All I wanted at this point was to collapse in a soft, warm bed, and then take a soak for about a century or two in a nice hot bath. Everything else in life –and _death_ – could wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2.12 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 19th, 2019, 8.57 AM USA Central Time


	28. That Butler, Initiation

_Arya's POV:_

The morning after the circus members had attacked the manor and Grell had done his business harvesting their souls and all that, I actually awoke before Mey-rin…for once.

Blearily eyeing the mantlepiece clock on our shared nightstand, I noticed it was about seven in the morning, and that the fluffy lump under Mey-rin's covers was actually the maid herself, probably exhausted from a long night of doing…well, whatever she and the other servants had done to hide the bodies and as much rubble as they could. I didn't know, and didn't want to know, having had _more_ than my comfortable share of corpses in the past 24 hours.

What had awoken me was a rough _banging_ on the door, the sturdy wooden structure actually bending slightly with the force of whoever was on the other side.

I chucked a pillow at Mey-rin and then flopped back under the covers and snuggled as she jerked upright with a snort: undoubtedly it was Finny, come to panic about the return of Sebastian and Ciel and how they had demolished half the manor –I remembered that much, since it had preluded Nina's first appearance and the peppy tailoress had been a somewhat significant force in my life for the past few weeks or so, being the maker of pretty much everything I wore, minus my shoes and underclothes. Let the other servants deal with that, it wasn't my fault, I'd been operating on short sleep these past few days, and _nothing_ , short of force, was going to drag me from this comfortably warm bed.

When I woke up again, it was just past noon, and Mey-rin was gone. With a yawn, I flopped gracelessly out of bed and shuffled down to the kitchen, the corners of my eyes drooping as I did my inadvertent best to imitate a zombie. I was so out of it, in fact, that when I arrived at the burned-out shell that used to be a hallway to a functioning kitchen –with rubble covering the ground, ceiling caved in, scorch marks everywhere, and a certain chill in the air that undoubtably came from one or more walls to the outside being blown out– I merely nodded once or twice groggily to myself and wobbled back around, trudging back to me and Mey-rin's room. I did have food in my apocalypse bag, after all, for emergencies, and if a severe lack of breakfast…er, lunch…um, food… didn't count as an emergency, I'd eat a table lamp.

Actually, I might do that anyways. My stomach was _not_ happy with me in regards to my caviler approach to mealtimes these past few days, especially combined with my gallops to and from Somerset.

That being said, I dug deep into my apocalypse bag, rummaging around blindly until I found my packets of food and bringing them out, crunching and munching away as I continued to fish one-handed, pulling out my stacks of books. To the best of my knowledge, the whole Phantomhive Manor Murders Arc didn't happen for a while, which meant these next two weeks would be an _excellent_ time to hone my lackluster magic skills. After all, if I was gonna be stuck with the "magic-user do not trust" aura or whatever that ticked off supernatural beings here so much, then I damn well may as well actually make sure that I knew magic worth knowing, magic I could use to defend myself with.

_Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, I believe the saying goes._

So thinking, I began separating the books into different stacks, studying what I had gotten. As planned, most of them were simple compendiums, meant to be used as references when working various kinds of magic. The problem with such books would be that they would repeat symbols –not entirely a bad thing, since that meant I could fact-check– and that some of the symbols I needed would most likely not be included. I didn't see, for example, a sigil representing "space" or "the country of Ethiopia specifically" showing up in your average magical tome all that often.

Oh well. I could do it the hard way, by collecting modifiers specifying geographic features and systematically eliminating all kinds of climate from the spell until there was nothing else left.

First things even first-er, though, I actually had to acquire the proper tools of my trade, as it were, and learning more about magical theorem wouldn't hurt me one jot either. That was mostly what the other books were: basic beginner's textbooks, apprentice grimoires, that sort of thing. I even had a copy of the _Key of Solomon_ , despite how Britain had said it was "mostly rubbish." I actually planned to _use_ it in the rubbishy sense, as even though a lot of the pentacles and other sigils recorded inside were pretentious nonsense, it was pretentious nonsense that got referenced a _lot_ , and I planned to have the source material on had just in case I needed to double-check someone's dickery.

Even though there were as many branches of magical teachings as there were different cultures in the world, dead and living, in the world I had learned my magic in, the basic formula all boiled down to the same thing: a magician used their willpower and a certain, unspecified part of their soul that was tied to magic –we knew it was soul-rooted without knowing the exact location beyond a doubt, since creatures and magic capable of stealing and splitting souls could remove someone's magical ability from them, but nothing else– to control greater forces of magic outside of themselves, be it magical creatures or magical force. Pentacles, pentagrams, and other kinds of diagrams were the backbones of focusing magic into a form tangible enough for us to use: adding words, magical symbols and runes from any one of the dozens of magical alphabets, or otherwise wielding additional tools focused the magic in more precise ways, allowing for greater power and simultaneous versatility.

This was partly why I was such a sucky magician, being only an apprentice and all that. More experienced magicians, like my teacher, Britain, had _memorized_ such complex arrays, and could call them forth in an instant –combining all three components, using their _willpower_ to envision the magical symbols as a _tool_ to focus their _innate controlling magic_ that, in turn, affected the outside world– to cast spells in a dazzling, rapid-fire hail of supernatural might, whether in smiting their opponents or tidying up their house for guests to come over. The only thing I could reliably call up in any situation so far was a magic wall that was largely impervious to, apparently, most everything short of a Grim Reaper's Death Scythe, because that was the only array I had memorized, largely because it was only a pentagram with five basic runes inside. If I wanted more diverse results, I would have to call up a different mental image of a different pentacle, which I could not do reliably yet, or actually, _physically_ , cast such a shape into the world myself.

That was why I would have to actually _draw out_ the final sigil I would use to get home on the ground or paint it on a wall or something, why even Britain and his fellow magicians had to draw out the other one physically –say what you will about memory tricks, no one could _possibly_ call to mind an exactly-detailed pentacle with fifty-plus runes and chains of spell-words running along and around every line and edge. You just couldn't.

In a battle situation, of course, drawing things out was impractical, which was why I would have to work more on memorization of spells I could use in such a hopefully-strictly-hypothetical-but-let's-be-realistic situation, and why most other magicians did too. Also, for reasons obvious, just envisioning them instead of vandalizing random surfaces was a lot easier.

Britain, and by extension me, had been taught to use the classical Wiccan pentagram, a five-pointed star in a circle, as his main focus, around which extra runes and so on were constructed. Other magicians used other symbols relevant to their culture, and they used physical tools to aid in their rituals that were _also_ relevant to their cultures: Britain stuck to his pagan roots, and by virtue of being the only decent magician I'd encountered thus far, his way was my way. Also his partners, Romania and Norway, did the same, though they diverged slightly on rare occasions and pertaining to certain rituals, with Norway holding fast to the Scandinavian and Germanic roots of his own paganism, and Romania favoring alchemy –of all things– over most else.

What this meant for me was that I was going to continue the Wicca methodology when creating my _own_ special and specific magical tools that I would use for whatever ritual occasions I needed _physical_ tools –in other words, pretty much all of the heavy-league spells– and _that_ meant, in turn, the traditional pagan implements of the four elements: the Chalice, the Athame, the Paten, and the Wand. (I mentally whacked my inner _Harry Potter_ nerd with a hefty crowbar as it suddenly rose inside me with a vengeance.)

I "nommed" a dried apple wedge and thought hard. Britain had mostly breezed over that particular part of my instruction, since it was never assumed _I_ would actually have a need to practice magic by myself after they sent me home, but I did remember that it was highly advised to create your own ritual implements yourself, to (at risk of sounding like a New Age hippie guru) imbue them with your personal magical energies and ensure they were virgin of any other use _except_ for magic, which would hypothetically make them stronger.

Since I didn't know metallurgy, I was obviously gonna have to kick at least the idea of a custom athame to the curb, and likewise the chalice, since I wasn't good at sculpting either…not to mention I didn't have access to _any_ of the materials I would need for that. The Paten –the ritual plate, usually inscribed with a pentagram– might be less challenging, but again, it was not likely to be anywhere near aesthetically pleasing should I somehow contrive to make one myself.

The wand was easy, since I just needed a stick. Didn't even have to be _wood_ , technically, just a stick of some type of material.

Still though…as long as I picked 'em up from a market or whatever, and ensured they were brand spanking new, I could get the athame and the chalice and the paten easy, and then customize them myself to the… _unique_ brand I needed, since I doubted Victorian markets sold plates with a five-pointed pagan star on the bottom, amongst other things.

That would have to wait until my next London visit, when I had more money. I could also pick up more books then, assuming I had read through the ones I had already and ascertained what gaps I needed to fill in. I mean, sure, I could probably just hand a shopping list to Sebastian and have him set up a tab with that simulacrum right now, but that would only do for the books.

I was not in a fucking million years letting a _demon_ put his malicious mitts all over my ritual tools.

Once I had those, though, I would have to start practicing, which meant laying aside a place _somewhere_ on the estate to do spellwork, and since it would also mean summoning creatures and staying out of eyeball range of the servants (minus Sebastian, whose gaze I could not escape without extremely unnecessary effort), which meant it was probably my best bet to set up a space in a clearing somewhere along the bridle path I rode Dämon along.

Well satisfied with my plans for the future, I packed away my food and cracked open one of the instructive books on ritual spellwork as I flopped back against my propped-up pillows, starting to read.

_***Time Skip***_

As it turned out, the chalice was actually the hardest of the lot to get. I'd managed to get a good, solid ceramic offering dish –the Paten representing the Element of Earth, I figured it was better not to get one made out of metal– for less than fifty pence, and a small, straight-bladed knife with a black hilt –technically the tool was originally the Sword, representing the Element of Fire, but apparently I was not the only magic-worker with a fondness for practicality and tradition had evolved the athame as a more convenient and easily-wielded substitute– for about the same, but since the Chalice was a feminine aspect and representative of the Element of Water and the moon and all that, I'd casually gone for tradition and shopped around for a silver cup.

…I wasn't even asking for pure silver, that was stupid and show off-y, but _apparently_ , even an alloyed silver chalice was more expensive than what I could fork over from a single month's pay, or at least, a month's pay that had already been subdivided and passed over to a certain magical simulacrum for more magic books.

Stupid cheating smith's shop.

But even so, it didn't take me more than a few weeks before I was riding Dämon out along the Phantomhive estate paths, looking for a convenient clearing in which to do my magic safely tucked away from anyone who might wander across it. Sure, I _could_ ward the area, but people tending to question golden, translucent glowing walls sprouting from the ground even in _my_ day, and I was in no mood to be hanged as a witch or whatever it was they did in England now.

But at length, I did find a clearing, a nice little patch of clear ground just far enough away from the path to avoid interruption and close enough to the estate to discourage the villagers and other inhabitants of the outer Phantomhive lands, but still at a respectable distance from the place where a demon ran wild.

Which did make me wonder…what _would_ Sebastian's idea of a fun party be like?

Logically, I knew it would most likely be some heinous bonfire of death, woe, and despair that allowed him to engage in his destructive instincts to the fullest, but the tiny part of fandom me that had yet to be squashed by multiple near-death experiences insisted that I envision the silky-haired butler parading through the stolid Victorian halls of the Phantomhive manor with the expansive gestures and manic energy of a modern teen at a rave, grinning a full teeth-baring grin as he did.

 _…Ciel would probably take umbrage._

Now that I had found my place, I began setting up wards of a more intangible nature about it, blocking out Sebastian's aura and cleansing the place of the subtle demonic energies that had seeped into it from his sheer proximity alone, not to mention whatever ungodly things the soil here had witnessed already. I had no doubt at all that the Noah's Arc Circus weren't the first people to be brutally slaughtered on this land even prior to Ciel's generation, and I knew they wouldn't be the last.

Once the area had been purified to my specifications, I finally began my spellwork. Between days of reading my magic books and slowly, painstakingly piecing together subsequent rituals, I honed my craft, calling to mind the new sigils and repeating them over and over again, with varied success, and tentatively calling magical creatures, being careful neither to offend nor to demand. I practiced the levitation spell I'd told Ciel about, thinking it would be the most useful of any, but no matter how I tried, I just couldn't hold the complex glyph in my mind for long enough to hold anything, even the smallest of pebbles, above the ground for more than ten or twenty seconds, and never mind larger things at all.

Paging through a book had lent me a spell and a sigil used to create, ostensibly, intense frost and cold –hinting at being able to freeze a person solid– and even miniature snowstorms, an ice spell that was equal to one's own intensity of will, and I had managed to create some quite pretty frost patterns on the trees, though nothing truly definite yet. It was also hard to tell what was my magic and what was simply natural, since it _was_ still late February in a landlocked section of Great Britain.

So thus, through trial and error, I slowly, slowly began improving and expanding my sphere of knowledge, connecting up patterns and rules of magic and working on calling sigils and runes to mind, interspersing this with writing in the loose notebooks Ciel had provided for me and flipping through my books, marking down what they had and what they did not, what I would have to put on the tab I had established with the simulacrum and what I would have to figure out on my own, what I had and what I didn't.

And thus, I grew, in both confidence _and_ my magic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 2.21 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 20th, 2019, USA Central Time


	29. That Butler, Prelude

_Arya's POV:_

* * *

_What horrors unfolded on that dark March night, when the tempest roared outside the walls of the palatial Victorian mansion like the lion it was so named for? What sinister deeds were planned, plotted, and spun like an intricate spider's web, which then ensnared all those who entered that Hive of Phantoms? What terror, as a specter of murder chased us through the dim and gloomy decadent halls like the wind howling about the parapets, and a jet-black monster finally received his due and bloody end…_

Record scratch. Freeze frame.

_Why is this being narrated in past tense?_

* * *

Rain-dark clouds hovered menacingly about the skies of Great Britain and, thusly, the Phantomhive estate. Once again, I found myself in the kitchen, and while it was a bit of a long haul to the library at least here I wasn't completely cut off from all human contact. It got seriously lonely, and creepy, up there surrounded by books –especially when most of them detailed various magical creatures and/or locations. At least down in the kitchen, I had the constant background hum of people and life.

Therefore, I chewed on the end of my pencil as I looked, frustrated, at the intricate three-dimensional diagram drawn out on my notebook, spanning several pages to get the full detail. If I managed to combine these forty-odd intermediate glyphs in the correct order and the correct fashion, I would –more or less– eliminate all of Europe from the terminus of my spell. Which would mean, even if I messed up in a magnificent and truly reprehensible manner, I wouldn't end up back here. I still hadn't gotten the specifics for Asia, any part of the New World, Africa, Australia, or Antartica, but at least I would be rid of Europe.

The problem was that after I had drawn out the pentagram, I would have to speak all of these glyphs aloud, to summon and activate them, then speak them in the right order, with the right chaining syllables, to knit them all together, then speak the right Binding Word to lock it all in place. I had already done the same thing to create these smaller sigils in the first place, which were magic symbols to represent certain countries and areas, all combined with the symbol for being locked, or forbidden.

And after I made this first really big one, I would create several more, to represent every other part of this planet and dimension, then combine all of _those_ into one master sigil, which would be placed at one of the points of the pentagram I would be drawing out; Britain had already sent me the incantations and master-glyphs representing the _Hetalia_ verse, the 2p!verse, and the world that we had sent majority of the 2p!s to, to be placed on the other three points; I would stand at the fifth, empty point and cast my spell from there.

But of course, before all that happened, I had to master _this_ spell.

"The sky seems awful cloudy, it does!" Mey-rin said, breaking me out of my thoughts as she clicked her glasses, staring up through the triangular window that looked out onto the lawn. "I hope the rain at least holds until the laundry is dry." she added nervously as I looked up and groaned, sparing a moment to rub the sore back of my neck.

"Geez, the weather really is a mess in this country." Bardroy commented from where he sat by the outside door, peeling potatoes with a sharp, straight knife. "Can't help gettin' all depressed when the sky's always this gloomy."

There was a flash and a loud whizzing sound, and we all jumped as the door –or rather, the cut-up chunks of it– was kicked inwards with a _bang_ and a loud crash. "Pardon the intrusion!" A cultured, upper-class voice said brightly as a man dressed all in white strode through the dust, his elegantly embroidered black vest flapping a little in the breeze. His hair was silver-white, cut in a bowl fashion, almost, with a long tail allowed to grow down to his shoulders; his oddly opaque eyes were a shockingly light blue-grey, like the bottom of the sky on the coldest, clearest winter days. Another white-dressed man stood behind him, though he remained silent. "Is Earl Phantomhive at home?"

"Who wants to know?" Bardroy asked bluntly as he stood, the angle of his peeling knife becoming aggressive, defensive, as Mey-rin reached inside her skirts. I remained still, by the counter, because I was ninety percent sure I recognized this guy –he was Earl Grey, one of the Queen's bodyguards/butlers/enforcers.

"Ohh~? Are you two going to _play with me?!"_ Grey shouted, using the old –but very effective– tactic of continuing to speak even as one moved to attack as he lunged towards Mey-rin and Bardroy, who ducked and skidded backwards respectively in two different directions. Grey went after Bardroy first, perhaps out of sexism, perhaps because he was simply closer, swinging his sword up for an overhead strike. However, he leaped backwards with the reflexes of a cat as the fine china and other plates on the shelves to his right exploded and shattered, swerving to see Mey-rin, glasses discarded, firing at him relentlessly with two pistols she must have had hidden somewhere in her skirts. "Wow! A two-handed shot! How very stylish of you!"

"But!" he added as he ran towards her, weaving through the hail of bullets like a dancer. He spun and slashed, his sword a gleam of light, and came to a halt just behind her as the upper half of the pistols, neatly bisected above her hands, clattered to the ground. "I win at close combat."

He spun again, raising his sword above Mey-rin for the final blow as I tensed up, ready to come to her aid if needed. "This is it!"

But it wasn't it, because Bardroy was lunging in towards his unprotected neck with the knife, and Earl Grey, changing plans instantly, instead jumped forward, kicking Mey-rin in the chest and using her to boost himself in a flip over Bardroy's head as the chef barely managed to avoid cutting her from stem to stern. "Too bad for you!" he crowed mid-jump, thrusting his sword at Bardroy's unprotected face.

_Clang!_

The fillings from a cream puff spurted over the shellshocked Bardroy's face, Earl Grey's sword having been deflected by a tray of them held by the inestimable Sebastian. I relaxed again, watching Earl Grey twist and land as Sebastian pulled the tray back to his chest and straightened. "May I present to you these custard cream puffs, made with plenty of traditionally-raised eggs produced on the Phantomhive estates? Please try one." the demonic butler offered as the bun Earl Grey had skewered slowly slid down his fencing sword, and Earl Grey shrugged, leaning in to take a bite as his compatriot finally deigned to enter the room, helping Mey-rin to her feet.

"Nn, not bad. I suppose I can give it a passing mark?" he mused, chewing slowly as Bardroy regained his balance –and his usual aplomb.

"Hey, Sebastian!" he barked, a tick mark throbbing on his face. "Who the hell are those guys!?"

"These two gentlemen are…" the demonic butler began, but Earl Grey interrupted him as he sheathed his sword with a _click_.

"Oh right, right! This is our first time meeting you!" he exclaimed as his companion handed Mey-rin her glasses back. The two white-suited men stepped up to each other, turning to face us. "I'm Charles Grey." he said.

"I am Charles Phipps." said his previously silent comrade.

"We are commonly known as the Double Charles." Earl Grey added smoothly, putting his hands on his hips. "We are Her Majesty the Queen's private secretarial officers, as well as her butlers. Nice to meet you!" He flicked an envelope out of his pocket and held it up with a smirk. "And today, we're messengers to deliver a letter to the earl!"

_***Time Skip***_

"What kind'a noble knows how to fight like that, huh?" Bardroy groused as he sawed some meat off of a bone, and I shrugged, helping Mey-rin hoist a stack of plates back up on a shelf.

"He's butler to the Queen though, yeah? I mean, he's gotta be able to protect her and whatever if something nasty happens." I offered, quite reasonably as far as I could tell.

The White-Clothed Menaces had been taken up to Ciel's office or study or whatever by Sebastian several hours ago, and life with the Phantomhive servants had, for the most part, gone back to normal. I pitched in to help when I could, feeling slightly uneasy. It had been almost two years, after all, since I since last laid eyes on _Black Butler_ from the outside, so my memories of the Murder Arc were more than a bit fuzzy. I remember Sebastian died –like, _duh_ – and that Snake later came to work at the manor, and that there were a bunch of guests invited to a party, but beyond that, I blanked out. I knew this and this and that and those, and little fragments of scenes about people whose names I barely remembered, but on the whole I was going into this blind.

That concerned me.

Of course, it wasn't like anything dangerous was going to happen, that much I did remember. This wasn't like the Atlantic arc, where everyone was fighting for their lives, or the Emerald Witch arc, where all the characters were in a strange country surrounded by enemies. This was Ciel Phantomhive taking on all comers on his home turf, inviting any manner of foolish adults onto his hellish playground to toy with until he broke and busted their gears. This was a _game_ , a shadowy game, a game of cloak and dagger, stealth and intrigue, murder and falsehoods. It would be orchestrated, start to finish, with the meticulous care the Queen's Watchdog showed to every project he every encountered, and Ciel and Sebastian would play their respective parts to the hilt without a hair out of place, pulling all the rest of us into their web of shadows and deceit.

In plain speech, this was going to be cakewalk, in no small part because everything had been –probably already– planned out.

So most of the rest of my night, between trying to prevent major (and minor) catastrophes in the kitchen, staring fruitlessly at the matrix I was trying to design, and studying a French book on the various supernatural creatures that populated _this_ world, in the back of my head I was constantly trying to piece together the plot of this arc as I remembered it –without much success. It was like trying to grapple with a enormous blob of ooze in the dark; the harder I grabbed, the more that slipped through my fingers, and no matter how I reached, I couldn't seem to find the ends, or even garner the true shape of this mass.

Distracted, I traced the edge of my bandaged –and _still_ healing– fingernail along the drawing of the creature this entry described –a green-haired woman with dark, wild eyes, a feral face, and sharp white teeth, translating without thinking or really registering the words.

> `The Undine, Creature of Water. Temptress, responsible for many legends of mermaids as sirens. Calls to men to lure them into her arms, then feeds on their flesh. Amiable to the touch of a female warlock, they can also be bent into service by one who follows the Water Path. Vicious fighters, an Undine can be bound or sent to guard water-rich paths that a warlock wishes to deter travelers from. Takes the form of waves on water when not needed or wishing to hide –their name comes from Latin "wave".`

A brief spark lit in my head. Maybe I could call up an undine and _politely_ ask for help with learning Latin –being much more powerful creatures than the pixies, an undine could whisper the language straight into my head with magic, sort of like a software downloading program…except instead of a computer, it was my brain, and instead of a game, it was a language.

I even went so far as to flip my journal over and scribble a brief note in the personal margins –it was getting harder and harder to remember to write down journal entries, although I did do my best with it. Calling up an undine would be dangerous, though, in no small part because of the fact that they were, well, _carnivorous_. Fairies were cute, safe little buggers, and the worst they could do to me if I angered them was tie knots in my hair and scatter my belongings to the wind. If I pissed off an undine, I would find myself missing, at best, chunks of flesh, and at worst, my head and everything attached. So while it did represent a large shortcut, I was still a bit leery of the whole thing.

_Eh, yes, no, and maybe so. We'll see how I do._

The candle by the table was starting to burn low, and as I stared vacantly at the pages, the words were starting to blur before my eyes. I rubbed them with a yawn; I should probably be getting to bed before I fell over; I had a long day ahead of me tomorrow –one of many, if my current progress was any indication.

Blowing out the candle, I tucked my journal under my arm and headed off to the downstairs section of the manor, towards the room I shared with Mey-rin. Most if not all of the hallways were dark, given as candles and open flames were expensive –in the literal and metaphorical sense– near all this wood paneling and wainscoting, and I made my way down one series of steps and opened the door to the suddenly much-plainer hallways that qualified as the "service" part of the manor. It was just plaster and wood, here, no fancy chandeliers or expensive carpeting, and I tried to avoid the floorboards that creaked as I made my way down the left-hand hallway.

My jaw stretched in a yawn, my journal bumping against my hip, as I climbed the short flight of stairs to the room, knowing that Mey-rin would probably already be in bed and asleep by this time. To my surprise though, as I stepped onto the landing, I saw an envelope pinned to the front of the door, a blur of white against the dark wood in the gloom, and pulled it off, flipping it over to see what I vaguely recognized as the Phantomhive seal. There was no addressee.

_Should I, should I not?_

I bit my lower lip. _Weeeell…it's not addressed to anyone, but it was pinned on our door, so there's a fifty-fifty chance it was meant for me._

I slid my bandaged fingertip under the wax seal and popped it open, absently shifting to lean on one foot as I did, and flipped open the envelop and pulled out a stiff white piece of paper with elegant copperplate handwriting scrawled all over it. _Well, it's not a disguised threat or a ransom note, unless the one doing the threat is the ponciest fancypants in all of human history._ I thought, squinting at the spidery handwriting in an attempt to read it –without success.

Holding the letter in my teeth momentarily, I clicked on the LED flashlight on my watch; the sharp, sudden white light flashing in the Victorian hallway like a bolt of lightning as I held my wrist at an awkward angle, spat the note out into my left hand, and held it up to read.

* * *

`Miss Aryana Thompson,`

`It has been the pleasure of the Earl of Phantomhive to invite you to a evening-dress soirée this 12th of March, hosted at the Phantomhive Estate. This invitation has been tendered to you for past services rendered, and in the hopes that you will admirably represent the budding branch of Funtom Co.'s American holdings as its legal representation executive. It is our fond hope that you may be able to make time in your busy schedule for this three-day event, and we await your arrival at our mansion eagerly.`

`Sincerely and with Salutations, Earl Ciel Phantomhive, Head of the Phantomhive Family and owner of Funtom Company, Toys and Sweets`

* * *

Reading between the fancy-pants lines, _Hey Thompson, in order to maintain your cover of being the owner of the American branch of Funtom, you have been invited to my dinner party, keep the charade up to the other guests and for the love of god please wear something decent and from our era._

(Okay, maybe I made up the last bit, but still.)

I sighed as I stuffed the letter back into the envelope, turned off my flashlight, and pushed open the door, seeing Mey-rin curled up in her bed, fast asleep. I could deal with all the repercussions of being personally involved in the plot later –though if I was being honest, I would've been kinda disappointed if I couldn't at least hang around and watch. Watching the anime adaption was _nothing_ compared to being right there in the universe with the characters watching things happen, and despite the trials and tribulations of living in such _shounen_ worlds, there were moments –such as this– that more than made up for it.

I wrestled off my dress and slid into my combat pajamas, practically oozing my way into the plain but comfy bed as I halfheartedly chucked my book and envelope onto the nightstand I shared with Mey-rin. I could deal with this all tomorrow…

And like that, I was asleep.

_Two Weeks Later_

It was just _spitting_ rain, and the smell of damp even pervaded the august halls of the Phantomhive manor as candles flickered, trying to combat the gloom, the scent of tallow and wax rising and curling like the faint smoke drifting from the lit wicks. Belowstairs, the servants were rushing about madly, preparing for the party, and a flicker of guilt stung my mind, that I wasn't there to help. But I was supposed to be at this party as a _guest_ , not a servant, though I was fairly certain I was going to be the lowest-ranking one there.

So I bit my lip, feeling faintly –oh, alright, _completely_ – ridiculous, as I looked at the fabric scattered across my bed.

I was having a fashion crisis.

Now, for the past six months prior to coming here, I had been hanging around men. _Military_ men at that, ones whom I had spent time with exercising, combat training, and on some occasions sparring with, _not_ discussing clothing choices. Previous to that, for the first sixteen years of my life, I had been living on a former-farm-turned-horse-ranch, which was _not_ a conductive environment for dress-up, childish or otherwise.

So, looking at the two dresses laid out on the bed, I was in agony.

The first one, the one that I had been given as a birthday gift before ever coming to this world, was a bright red cheongsam, made of heavy, damasked silk, with an intricate series of golden dragons writhing and grasping all over it. The sides were slit, which would expose my legs all the way up to the lower thigh, the neckline flat, the tight sleeves short, and the collar was high, fastening loosely across my throat with a clasp carved from white jade. It looked cool and elegant and almost unbearably comfortable, but then there was that whole issue of oh-so-Victorian-obscene _legs_.

The other dress, also red silk, but a darker, deeper shade, like wine or a burgundy rose, had a waterfall of wavy horizontal pleats for the skirt, with a creamy golden rose made out of curled ribbon sewn down just above my navel, seemingly holding them all up. Frothy lace spilled out in a large V above the rose, climbing up to just below my cleavage, where a visible strip of the red fabric behind the lace cut across my upper chest to preserve my modesty. My equally short sleeves were puffed and loose, and so far as I could tell the whole thing was the very picture of modest Victorian elegance –which meant that it was confoundedly complicated and unnecessarily poofy.

_**Geez** , this is a hard decision. My dress shoes go with both, and so does my jewelry. Maybe I should just decide with eneey-meeny-miney-moe?_

I glanced at my watch, which I had left on the bed by the mantelpiece, and gulped. _Looks like I'll have too, if I wanna make it there on time._

"Eneey-meeny-miney-moe, catch a tiger by his toe, if he hollers let him go…" I muttered under my breath, switching the side of my finger with every syllable as I flicked it back and forth, back and forth, between the two dresses. "…eneey-meeny-miney-moe."

_And the Chinese cheongsam wins._

I quickly took it from the bed and pulled it over my head, shivering at the feel of cool silk sliding against my bare skin. Tugging everything straight, I did up the fastening for my collar with one hand as I pulled my dress shoes out from underneath the bed. They were brown patent leather, made in Spain, and _very_ expensive –or so I was given to believe, since I got them as a birthday present at the same party as the dress…along with the iridescent earrings that I then clipped onto my ears, and the matching pendant-style necklace.

I ran my hands over my long hair anxiously, then decided –what the hay– to just twirl it up into a bun and skewer it with a hairpin, which I had luckily managed to purloin from Mey-rin; apparently letting one's hair down in the literal sense was also a no-no during this time period.

No time for makeup and no access to it anyway, I looked myself up and down one last time. For someone unused to the whole dressup gig, I looked alright, I supposed, though my hands were definitely a jarring note to the whole fancy-dress image. Thin white cotton bandages were wrapped around each of my ten fingers, from the second knuckle upwards, even though my nails had regrown about three-quarters of the way up my raw nail beds. Wrapping fingers was hard, doubly so when the bandages weren't adhesive, and I had to redo it every morning, after applying the antibiotic paste Britain's doctors had given me. I was supposed to wash my exposed nail beds, too, to prevent infection, but when my only water access was the stuff in a pitcher collected by Mey-rin, often from rainwater or a roof cistern, I was understandably reluctant to allow the un-purified stuff anywhere near my poor mangled fingers. This was the 19th century, where pollutants and diseases ran amuck, after all. Syphilis and cholera and pneumonia and who-knew-what-else dwelling in the air and the ground and the water was a pretty powerful incentive not to wash my raw, exposed nail beds in water that hadn't been thoroughly boiled beforehand.

I supposed I could have worn gloves, to hide the telltale bandages, but that would require acquiring them and at the moment I didn't exactly have the ability to do that. Anyways, I was good enough for now, and after one last pat to my hair, I left the room and hurried towards the vestibule, where the rest of the night's guests –and the start to the night of murder– awaited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 2.31 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 21st, 2019, USA Central Time


	30. That Butler, Fugue (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arya's mention of Black Forest cake is one of the many instances that, although we share in our interest of Germany and anime in general, from which she and I diverge –despite many personal wishes to the contrary, I have always and will always never been able to like chocolate in any form. 
> 
> Fair friendly warning, as well, I have absolutely no clue how to speak French. I am aware that at least in German, however, the bitch to learning it is the tense and the grammar, not the vocabulary. 
> 
> Also, supposedly Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left school in Venice because he didn't like/understand the German medical terms they used, and in the A Scandal in Bohemia story (the one where he introduced Irene Adler) Holmes also comments, upon inspecting the message written to him by his mystery client for their identity, "only a German is so uncourteous to his verbs." So I feel that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle probably wasn't a big fan of the language.

_Arya's POV:_

Quiet murmuring conversations dominated this entrance hall as the party guests conversed in little knots of people, usually one-on-one, and I ran my eyes over them from the sidelines, trying to remember who was whom before I tripped up and did something stupid.

_Loud guy with diamonds all over his hands…uh, Woodson, Woodley, something like that…apologetic-looking kid is probably that shipping guy's son or whatever…the man and woman standing together are probably Irene Whoever and that director/lover of hers, Grimsby, the theater people…_

I heard a yelp and a small commotion from the other side of the large marble staircase, and curious, walked around to see who it was. Lau and Ran-Mao, both wearing slightly more elaborate forms of their traditional clothing, were trading words with a sheepish-looking brunette man wearing a comparatively shabby brown working suit and tie.

"And this is Miss Aryana Thompson, a skilled worker who has single-handedly created a Funtom branch in America." Lau said seamlessly, taking a step to the side and gesturing towards me, though how he had seen me coming, I could not fathom.

"Oh, er, hello there, miss." the man said, clearly put as off-kilter by the sudden introduction as I was, a faint Scottish burr coloring his words as I blinked in surprise.

"Hey. Not to be rude, but who're you?" I asked curiously, and his eyes slid sideways.

"A-as I was telling Mister Lau here…I am an oculist, who does a bit of writing on the side." he mumbled bashfully, tapping his index fingers together.

"How very fine!" Lau said brightly. "Why, that makes you quite the professor!"

"Nothing of the sort!" the man blurted in surprise, waving his hands. "I'm just an amateur, more like. I've never even had the honor of meeting the Earl, and I don't understand in the slightest why I've been invited…"

"What sort of stuff do you write?" I asked him curiously, tilting my head.

"A bit of mysteries, historical novels, that sort of thing…" he mumbled, a gloom cloud falling over him. "Though my stories have not been selling well…my latest novel, A _Study In Scarlet_ , did quite poorly, with many professionals critiquing the improper usage of the tools of their trade that my main character-"

Hold up. _Hold right the fuck up._

"Sherlock Holmes, right? That was the main character?" I asked suddenly, and he blinked, looking mildly pleased.

"Ah, yes, that is him."

"And you're Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."

He flushed deeply. "W-well, I don't know about _sir_ , but…yes, that's me."

_Holy mother of mystery, I'm talking to the author of Sherlock Holmes!_

"Dude, I am _such_ a huge fan!" I almost squealed, making him jump as I discarded every vestige of proper Victorian attitude ever and bounced like a fangirl at a concert. "Can I have your autograph?!"

"I, um, er, yes, if you'd like…" he stammered gratefully, shuffling through his own pockets in search of a pen. "I-I fear it won't be much use to you, but if you enjoyed the story so much…"

_Oh hun, you have no idea…_

"My my, this is a pleasant coincidence." Lau said as Doyle continued to fumble, and a shadow seemed to fall over his face as he smirked eerily. "And I'm quite sure that something even more amusing will come out of all of this…without a doubt."

"Eh?" Doyle asked as he finished signing the scrap of paper I had eagerly thrust out to him, and I tucked it deeply inside my cleavage –for lack of pockets– as Lau returned to beaming innocently.

"Moreover, the Earl has a staunch aversion to society and is renowned as a rare character who hardly ever shows himself. I think this might well be the first time he has ever welcomed guests to his home?" he asked rhetorically, throwing out an arm. "What luck for you, Professor!"

"What sort of person is this Earl?!" Doyle asked nervously, putting a hand it his mouth, and Lau lightly tapped a finger against his chin.

"Now let me see…" He pointed upwards with a slight smile. "He's a very proud fellow, who typically wears an expression somewhere between sour and angry."

"EH!?" Doyle squeaked.

Lau stroked his chin with two fingers as if tracing a beard, beaming. "And his eyepatch, which would not be amiss in a pirate, seems to have quite the the story behind it, and…"

"Why don't you leave your teasing of my guest at that?" Ciel's irritable voice barked from the top of staircase, and the four of us looked up as Doyle gaped.

"Eh…a child?" he squeaked, and Lau pointed to Ciel cheerfully.

"Yes! That little boy is Earl Phantomhive! Isn't he just adorable…" he said playfully, and a cloud of tick marks erupted from behind Ciel as he stomped his cane.

"The "little" is unnecessary!" he barked, and Lau shrugged as Ciel cleared his throat, descending down the stairs.

"See? He's angry now…"

"Ahem! I thank you for accepting my invitation on this occasion. I am the head of this family, Ciel Phantomhive. Ladies and gentlemen, those of you with whom I am acquainted through your continued patronage and those I am meeting for the first time, I hope you will allow me to extend my greetings to you anew in person once the banquet is underway." Ciel paused as he stepped onto the ground floor with the rest of us. "The guest of honor appears to be missing?" he murmured to Sebastian, who stood beside him, and the demonic butler bowed slightly.

"It would seem the foul weather has delayed his arrival." he replied quietly, and Ciel sighed, looking at the cascade of rain pouring down the nearby windowpanes.

"Well, that's just great." he muttered tersely. "We can't have everyone waiting in the hall like this…"

Mey-rin interrupted the potential for disaster as she tromped away from the door, walking heavily to get Sebastian and Ciel's attention. "The guest has arrived, he has!" she squeaked, bowing nervously in the general direction of the doors as Tanaka opened them on a bearded man –and Earl Grey.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance." the obviously elder gentleman said formally with a faint, harsh German accent, placing a hand over his chest and bowing slightly. He was broad-shouldered and keen-eyed for all his advancing years, his greying hair forming a goatee and sideburns on his square jaw, rather than a beard as I had first assumed and thought to remember. "I am Georg von Siemens. Thank you for your kind invitation."

Earl Grey waved cheerily from behind him. "Hiya! Is the party all set to go?"

"I apologize for having kept you waiting on my account." Siemens added as he moved forward to shake hands with Ciel, who showed no sign of irritation despite his scowl from before.

"Not at all." he replied calmly. "I thank you for traveling at such length to be here. Let us exchange greetings one the party has begun." he continued as he let go and turned away, speaking half over his shoulder. "Tonight's dinner is buffet-style, so everyone may speak freely with one another. This way please."

Sebastian unfolded a piece of paper as Ciel walked through the doors to the nearby dining hall. "Ladies and gentlemen, I shall announce each of you, so please go to the dining room when your name is called. First…"

Lord Siemens was first, obviously, being the guest of honor, and then Earl Grey, being a noble in his own right who also served the Queen personally. After him was Woodley –whose name I had gotten half right, at least– as a powerful and wealthy businessman and president of his own diamond company. The meek gentleman I had spotted before was ushered in after him –one Patrick Phelps, apparently, son of a distinguished shipping magnate, but not yet the owner of the company forthwith. After him came Irene Diaz and Grimsby Keane, for although being "mere" entertainers they were also entertainers at the top of their game –and the popularity charts. Then Lau and Ran-Mao, a branch manager and…his associate…of someone else's company, and then me, the same. Arthur Conan Doyle came in after all of us, being only a doctor and a sort of "personal" invitee of Ciel's.

After we had all been ushered into the room, the people once again gathered into small knots and began my least-favorite part of Victorian party society: polite political gib-gab and bootlicking.

"When his grandfather was Prime Minister, word of the man's shrewdness reached even as far as Germany. Still, I must say, he is the spitting image of his grandfather." von Siemens said of Earl Grey, who swirled the wine in his glass, smiling on without comment.

"Speaking of Earl Grey, he hails from a family of such repute as to have lent its name to a tea." Woodley agreed. "I never imagined the day would come when I could personally offer him my compliments."

"As I've only just inherited my title, I think Earl Phantomhive plays the part far better than I. Right?" Earl Grey said with a playful tilt of his head in Ciel's direction, who scoffed quietly.

"Hardly. I still have much to learn." he demurred. "I've but managed to start up my company as Earl, as Miss Thompson could attest." _Oh no you don't you leave me out of this you little rat._ "As far as business is concerned, Mister Woodley is the clear expert in such matters."

"You are much too modest, my lord!" Woodley protested with a light laugh –though I got the feeling he didn't do such a thing often. The way he slicked his dark, going-to-gray hair back from his broad, stubborn forehead, the heavy way his eyebrows hung over his cold eyes, and the huge, glittering diamonds that he boasted on every ring on every finger; I was reading all the signs of an arrogant, self-important, selfish, blustering bully –the kind of elevated, wallet-overstuffed cooperate leader that perpetuated the historical strikes of mill and railroad workers.

"Especially considering how the art of diamond polishing will become an important technology that supports the heavy industries." von Siemens added. "To have among her colonies diamond-producing nations is a major advantage to Great Britain for sure. Even in my country, heavy industries such as steel and shipbuilding are showing growth of late, and our bank is considering focusing most of its efforts on them and their like. We may be no match for Great Britain now, but we will most certainly catch up one of these days, you'll see."

Woodley laughed that hearty, false-sounding laugh again. "We mustn't let our guard down, eh, Mister Phelps?" he said, nudging the smaller man as Phelps jumped.

"Eh!? Y-yes, I suppose you're right." he mumbled as Lau and Ran-Mao strolled over to us.

"Lord Earl, would you introduce me as well?" Lau asked smoothly, and Ciel gave a brief nod.

"Very well. Allow me to introduce Mister Lau, British Branch Manager of the Shanghai trading company _Kong-Rong_."

"Kong-Rong?!" Phelps squeaked, turning pale, and Lau opened one eye to glance at him as the shipping magnate's son flinched and turned away.

"How do you do, sir?" Lau said to von Siemens as if nothing had happened, giving a short bow as Ran-Mao detached from his sleeve and wandered away. "I am Lau."

"You must possess an extensive network to have a branch in Great Britain…" von Siemens began as Ran-Mao suddenly popped up beside him and hugged his arm, squishing her ample chest against his shoulder. "Wha-?!" he spluttered, cutting himself off.

"Dear, dear." Lau said with playful sadness as the German banker continued to splutter more and more the harder Ran-Mao clung to him. "Really now, Ran-Mao. I do beg your pardon, sir. She can be such a baby."

He cheerfully continued business-talking over von Siemens' sounds of distress, completely ignoring how Ran-Mao cuddled up against the German man. "We may have a wide network, but we've yet to intrude upon Germany. I do hope to learn many things from you for future reference."

"I understand, so please get away from me!" von Siemens blurted, grabbing Ran-Mao by the shoulders and pushing her away from himself rather forcefully. She wandered back over to Lau as von Siemens coughed into his fist and tried to regain his aplomb. "If it's Germany that interests you, I'll tell you all about it at length tomorrow. I'm curious about the situation in Asia myself."

"Excuse us for interrupting." came a soft voice, and the group turned to see that Irene and Grimsby had come to join our cluster as well. She was the slim, pale sort of blonde that Victorians loved best in literature and time, her skin pale and smooth as milk, her hair not the brash, vibrant blonde that my culture was used to appreciating, but a softer, more muted hue, rippling and falling to her shoulders in a silky waterfall held back from her doe-like forehead only by a headband-arrangement of lilac-colored flowers that matched her elegant, frothy dress. Grimsby, as expected from an eccentric theater manager, went for the bold –as the saying went– styling his short pumpkin-orange hair in an odd hairdo that involved geling it into a parakeet-like crown of spines on the top of his head, and allowing one long wedge to fall across his left eye as it trailed off into a curled strand near his chin. His bow tie was also polka-dotted.

"Thank you for inviting us tonight." Grimsby said, and Woodley gave a short bow.

"I am honored to meet the songstress and director who are capable of filling every last seat at the National Theatre." he said as Irene gave a curtsy.

"I am Irene Diaz."

"And I, Grimsby Keane."

"Even people in Germany are talking about how beautiful your productions are." von Siemens said as I spotted Doyle fidgeting in the background, clearly trying to work up the nerve to introduce himself. "I would very much like to have you preform in Germany with Miss Irene. If it's a question of financing, we can discuss that as well."

"Is that so?" Grimsby said with a smile. "I find that most heartening. I have an idea for a set I'd like to try staging at the Berlin National Opera House!"

"Ah! Um, I-" Doyle blurted, looking more flustered than ever, but Earl Grey spoke at the same time, and his louder voice and higher ranking took immediate psychological precedence over the rest of the party guests.

"Well then! That should be it for introductions, so what do you say to a toast!" he asked cheerfully, and like clockwork Sebastian moved in with a tray, handing out glasses to all the guests.

I gulped though, giving a nervous tug at the high collar of my cheongsam, and smiled weakly as I looked at the various crystal flutes of…something alcoholic… as they were passed out. I probably would have refused mine, if not for Lau happending to look directly at me and raising one of his eyebrows in a smug, sneaky little manner as his ominous aura resurfaced the moment Sebastian passed by. I was fairly certain I had the Chinaman's measure now; no matter how docile he acted (er, at least mostly) in the canon manga that I'd seen, Lau was still a criminal. His interest in me was that of a highly useful pawn –one could only imagine all the advantages that the only magician in the world, even if I was just an apprentice, could bring to the criminal mastermind's table.

Given as I had made my refusal clear…ish, he was gleefully deciding to fuck with my head at every given opportunity.

 _Like a thwarted brat pulling the wings off an insect…_ I thought absently as I gave a dubious look at the golden liquid inside my glass, and slowly took a cautious sip.

_Crisp, tingly, with this kind of earthy, haylike taste, and it feels like a bubble of air in my throat._

"Why, English beer isn't bad at all!" von Siemens said in pleasant surprise, confirming my suspicion. I'd had a sip or two of it before, from the German stuff, actually, since my friend Prussia was adamant about me _"Not dying before a taste of this awesome stuff crosses your lips; however, the awesome Prussia will be an awesomely safe chaperone and only let you have a little bit so you don't get drunk and/or nothing bad happens."_

Then, slightly quieter _"Or so West won't wring my neck when he finds out."_

I sighed and then chuckled a little; I missed Prussia's unique brand of madcap humor.

Lifting my eyes from the beer, my gaze roamed the hall, seeing the other dinner guests quietly conversing with each other or getting served food by Sebastian over at the banquet table. Even _his_ mad butler skills were being tested to the limit, for he had to be ready to dish out food at a moment's notice _and_ carry around a tray of red wineglasses for anyone thirsty or wanting a change of pace _and_ watch for any signs of impending trouble amongst the gradually further-intoxicated guests –all while keeping within the bounds of credible humanity and not zipping all over the place like a shadowy demonic roadrunner.

…which was a highly amusing mental image in and of itself.

I snorted to myself in a somewhat giggly fashion, then took an apprehensive and slightly guilty look at my drink. My cheeks felt a little flushed. Was I getting tipsy already?

…nah.

I'd had more than one sip from beer before without getting tipsy, and while the different distilleries and whatnot would have given this beer a different alcohol content than the one I'd tried, they were both still beer. There was only so much you could do with it and how strong you could make it.

That being said, there was more than enough alcohol here in terms of wine and refills that I could probably get absolutely shitfaced even if I had the drinking tolerance of a fish. I tapped a still-bandaged and healing fingernail lightly against my glass, absently listening to the muffled _tinks_ , and pursued my lips as I ran the notion through my head a few times. Then I laughed and shook my head violently at myself, trying to knock the nonsensical ideas out of my head.

_I am not going to get drunk just because I can like a typical reckless teenager. I am not going to get drunk just because I can like a typical reckless teenager._

_…even though I've never even tried alcohol before and am somewhat very curious. Even though I've never even tried alcohol before and am somewhat very curious._

_Dude, focus._ I mentally chided myself. I mean, what kind of impression would I make if I was flailing all over the place drunk –on Sebastian and Ciel most especially, since my livelihood (and possibly live-ness) depended on keeping them convinced of my usefulness and level-headed nature. I had no idea what kind of drunk I was, but everybody goes through a happy stage of intoxication at some point as they're getting sloshed, even if it's only a few seconds, so there would probably be flailing on my part eventually.

Exhibit A, what von Siemens was doing right this very second.

Combining a crippling lack of food with an exuberant overabundance of alcohol, his stiff composure was rapidly slipping into drunken, flailing sloth, and I sighed quietly, shaking my head as I walked over and accepted some salmon, red grapes, and a few slices of cheese from Sebastian. There were several whole turkeys, an elegant dish of mashed potatoes, and a decadent Black Forest cake that I was going to keep half an eye on at all times for the remainder of the night. Living in Germany, most especially the southern, Bavarian region, had given me an acute taste for _Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte_. But then again, what kind of messed-up soul doesn't like double-chocolate-cake? It's practically a crime against humanity.

…Sebastian's decided lack of interest in the cake was definite proof of this theory.

I forked some of the salmon and put it in my mouth, humming appreciatively at the burst of flavor as I was suddenly –and oddly enough– pounced upon by Earl Grey.

"Oh? You're that manager of the…American branch of Funtom, isn't that right?" he asked as he breezed past me with a dish of his own, turning and coming to a halt, and I hastily chewed and swallowed before answering. His grey eyes seemed strangely dull and opaque –like those of a fish or a dead man, and they locked onto my own like a raptor sighting in on its prey.

"Uh, yeah, that's me." A bead of nervous sweat threaded down my neck, and I tugged at my collar compulsively once again as I tried to channel the Victorian mannerisms I'd read –and recently seen– in action. "My lord is, um, too kind to remember me. It's not a big branch."

He laughed, gently swirling the wine in his glass. "Nevertheless, it is impressive that you managed to get it up and running on your own!" he complimented. "Why, I don't think that Lord Phantomhive has ever once set foot Canada, much less America!"

 _Which would make **actually** establishing an American branch difficult…_ I thought with mental scoff, then wondered abruptly if that's what Earl Grey was getting at. "Well, yeah, but he…erm, does has an extensive network of lackeys and those loyal to him." I admitted, trying to mask my fumbling with pretended reluctance or embarrassment –anything to keep him from guessing my game.

Now, granted, he _could_ be asking out of polite curiosity –could be, but probably wasn't. I'd read enough novels and observed enough sociopaths from up close and personal to know when someone was trying to play me like a fish on a line, and besides, the grand nobility chess game of power and privilege seemed to be by-the-course in this world –even if it wasn't remotely plot relevant, this was still someone probably trying to steal some kind of a march on Ciel. "Lord Ciel was kind enough to approve of the formation of such a branch when they brought the matter to his attention."

Feeling a bit more confident in this cover story now that I had my feet underneath myself, I continued with what I hoped was a confident smile. "And though British and American audiences are two vastly different beasts, the urge for new toys and novel confectionaries amongst children is universal –so we hardly have trouble staying afloat."

Earl Grey made a sort of "huhm" noise, looking suitably impressed. "Goodness, I suppose you are right." he agreed with a short, polite little laugh. "The human urge for material goods is insatiable. Our greed truly knows no bounds, doesn't it?" He looked at me over the rim of his wineglass as he raised it to his lips. "Given that, it does seem odd, though, that your branch has not expanded. Forgive me for even suggesting such a thing, but perhaps it might be put into more –capable– hands? You are, after all, but a woman, and though I must pay you the highest compliments for running a business for so long with so much skill, I would think it might be time, now, to hand it over to someone who can take care of such a large enterprise. It must surely be overly taxing to you; can you not relinquish such an endeavor and find someone to take care of you?"

I took a sip of my own drink to avoid answering, buying time for thought. Number one in my mind, repeated over and over again, was the fact that no matter how chauvinistic his statement I absolutely could not deck a respectable scion of the nobility in his pale pointed nose for what he just said. He wasn't assuming anything, of course, in the fact that I wasn't married –there was no ring on either of my fingers after all…but he of course couldn't be so rude as to "embarrass" me by pointing that out directly. Nor could he overtly state "Hey, you're a chick, you can't run a business, here hand it over to some Manly Man and go get married."

"My lord does me a credit to be interested in my affairs." I finally said with a light laugh. _Translation, get the fuck out of my personal business, you creep._ "But Lord Phantomhive finds himself reluctant to expand his business in foreign climes without having a firm grip over those affairs. A misguided effort to expand may end up slandering the name of Funtom permanently within the New World; doubtless, he will wish to attend to those matters personally."

_Translation, I'm just a hired hand; you want real info, you go to the boss. Also, not that it's any of your business, but he will expand when he damn well wants to._

"I, of course, have high hopes for our company's future." I finally summarized, toasting him lightly before not-very-subtly breaking off the conversation by walking away.

 _Geez, what's his problem?_ I thought as I power-walked over to where the rest of the guests were congregating, drifting around the edges of the ground until they were between me and Earl Grey. I remembered that I had really disliked him in the manga, and that seemed to carry over into real life –he was a jerk. All that digging and prying about Funtom's American branch…what was he up to? Trying to expose Ciel's fakery?

 _But I mean…really, it wouldn't be that hard for Ciel to introduce Funtom into the Americas._ I thought as I dug absently at my food, slowly demolishing my plate. _I wasn't wrong…American kids would like his toys and sweets just as much as the British ones; hehe, maybe even a bit more, since we're such gluttons. He could really turn a profit if he set up shop over there. Only problem is what I discussed with Earl Grey…Ciel really does like having everything under his eye at all times, and I doubt he'd let such a potentially lucrative branch be run by anyone but himself…which defeats the purpose of having it in another country in the first place._

I sighed, looking into my half-full wineglass and wondering what my chances of getting a glass of water were. All the drinks I'd seen so far were all some form of alcohol, and while that was all very well and good for adults, I was still a teenager. I needed something that didn't made my mouth tingle for every sip, nor didn't risk me making a drunken fool of myself in public.

And once again, von Siemens proved my point most eloquently.

"I'VE ASKED YOU TO PLEASE STOP THAT, SIR!" Irene shouted from across the room, wrapping her arms around herself protectively and backing away a step from the drunken man. "You insist on laying your lecherous hands upon my person…and I can't stand it anymore!"

Von Siemens swayed where he stood, clearly drunk past all reason, as Phelps fluttered nervously behind him, stammering meekly as he attempted to try and diffuse the situation. In my "risqué" cheongsam, I was suddenly glad that I hadn't wandered over to von Siemen's area of the party, where he had clearly been engaging in this sort of behavior for a while.

" 'hat was thaat? T'e one gaddin' 'bout in clothes like that's t'e one in t'e wrong!" he slurred, then put a grabbing arm around her shoulders. "Truth is, you wanna be touched, don'tcha? Stop playin' the innocent li'l lamb!"

"You awful man!" Irene shouted, slapping his face harder and with more strength than I would have expected coming from a woman who looked like one of those expensive old-fashioned fine-porcelain dolls –though with blonde hair and a lilac dress. "For shame!"

Von Siemens staggered to fall on his rear, not being terribly coordinated at the moment, his face slowly darkening as he trembled with anger. "Why, you…HOW DARE YOU!" he roared, flinging the contents of his wineglass at the opera star as she flinched away, shielding her face with one white-gloved arm.

The entire room, who had been drawn to this little drama, gasped as Ciel, with the genius for timing that he had, popped up to step forward and shield her himself, taking the fall –or rather, splash– as the expensive champagne caught him full-on across the front, making everyone gasp again.

The fizzy champagne dripped silently from Ciel's face and hair, soaking into the front of his clothing, and murmurs broke out as Irene clutched her hands to her chest. "My lord-!"

Ciel opened his eye to level a disdainful look upon von Siemens, causing Irene to cut herself off, putting her gloved fingers to her mouth. "This is a banquet. Please do try to restrain yourselves and leave it at that for the evening." he stated calmly.

However, the fuse beneath Grimsby Keane was already lit. "YOU DIRTY OLD CODGER!" he roared furiously, seizing a wine bottle from where it was chilling in a bucket of ice. "DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH MY WOMAN AS YOU PLEASE!"

He whipped it at von Siemens as the little knot of people that formed this tableau gasped and flinched to the side, facing him and his shout, the heavy bottle spinning end-over-end as it whirled inexorably towards the startled dignitary's face.

Sebastian, with the grace, verve, and aplomb that was his trademark, snatched the bottle in mid-spin, midair, popping the cork and flipping himself to end his somersault and land on a stepladder beside an empty wine tree, poising the bottle over it elegantly as wine flowed out to fill the crystal-clear glasses. I suppressed the urge to clap and/or hold up a "10/10" scorecard.

_This guy would make a killing at the Olympics._

"This is a fabled wine from Purcari village in southeast Moldova. Please do enjoy it." the butler said smoothly as the flow of wine came to a halt, pulling the bottle back up to display the provenance tag to the awed guests.

"How exquisite…what is this tree!?"

"When in the world did you…"

Argument (and potential bruising) forgotten, von Siemens tilted his head up to sniff appreciatively. "And this aroma! I feel like I'm in a field of _Blumen!"_ he exclaimed, eyes closing.

"Smells delish~! Can I have a glass?" Earl Grey asked with an outstretched hand to Sebastian, and von Siemens started.

"M-me too!"

"And me~!" Lau called, raising his wide sleeve from the back of the group.

Disaster averted, Sebastian climbed down the ladder slightly to pass glasses onto Mey-rin's serving tray, and she went around the gathering, offering them to the other guests. Earl Grey even took two.

"Are you having fun, Miss Arya?" she asked me excitedly as it came to be my turn, and I somewhat nervously exchanged my largely-empty glass for the glass of wine she pressed upon me.

"I guess." I mumbled, my face feeling a bit hot. I looked down at the scintillating golden depths of my new drink, swirling it around a little. "I haven't ever gotten this much alcohol at one sitting before."

"You'll be fine, yes you will!" Mey-rin assured me with a beam. She grabbed my other hand and squeezed it eagerly, careful to avoid the tips of my fingers –still bandaged and healing. "You're at a fancy party with a bunch of unmarried gents, and that nice opera singer is the only other lady about! You should take the opportunity when it comes, yes you should!"

I snorted out a giggle. "Seriously, dude?" I asked her in a similarly hushed voice. "This isn't a some kind of marriage gala or whatever –we're not here to flirt. Pluswhich, aren't all of these guys higher in rank than me?"

"Well there's that Woodley gentleman-"

"Hell no." _Way too old for me._

"Mr. Phelps?"

"I don't date people who look like they'd faint if a ferocious mouse crossed their path." _Well actually I don't really date at all, but I suppose it still counts as true anyways._

Mey-rin blinked behind her huge glasses. "Eh?"

_Language drift again._

"Uh, date…you know…" I said awkwardly, gesturing a little with my glass to reinforce the point. "Pay courtship to. Go out walking with. Period of flirtation and/or courtship prior to engagement. Have frequent luncheon engagements with. So on and so forth."

She perked up in understanding immediately. "Ah! I see now!" Mey-rin then held a hand to the side of her face, hiding her mouth as she leaned in close to whisper to me. "But seriously now Miss Arya, don't you want to catch yourself a good husband? There's all sorts of nobility and rich men here, and you're one of only two females for them to talk to!" she said eagerly, then cast a conspiratorial glance towards Irene and Grimsby, who were standing together. "And the other one might already be taken anyways!"

"Husband-fishing is a sport unknown to me." I told her blandly, then smiled a little to take the sting out of my next words. "And shouldn't you be serving drinks? Don't want to get in trouble with Sebastian, now."

"Oh! Right!" Mey-rin squeaked, pulling away and almost dropping her tray as she fumbled to take it into both hands and balance the glasses. "Be seeing you later, yes I will!"

And she trotted off into the crowd, leaving me behind as I laughed a little and rolled my eyes.

With the increase in the volume of the room, however, my introvert sensibilities were kicking in, and I retreated a little until I was hovering in the vicinity of a wall, sipping cautiously at the crisp wine in my glass as I observed the gathering from the sidelines. Practically everyone else had formed a little clot around the sparkling wine tree, laughing and making merry as von Siemens –bowtie now around his forehead and not his neck– snatched an unwary Mey-rin from her path and Ran-Mao fluttered assiduously around him, clearly enjoying the –ahem– celebratory affects of liquor.

_"-de cette chemise en peluche d'un homme une fois-"_

I blinked and half-tuned to the side, seeing Ciel standing by the wall as well, further along, with a snowy white towel draped around his shoulders and neck and Sebastian standing before him with the earl's drenched suit jacket over one arm. Ciel was the one speaking French, which was what had jogged my attention, as he disdainfully pinched a strand of his bangs and pulled downward to wring out the champagne. _"-que l'alcool est impliqué, eh?"_ he huffed, and I realized with a smile of pleasure that I could actually follow most of what he just said, or at least, the parts that I had heard.

"- _of that stuffed shirt of a man once liquor's involved, eh?"_

Ciel glanced barely in von Siemens's direction as his mouth turned just barely downwards in a disapproving scowl. _"En le voyant comme ça, je dois dire que lui et la bouteille ne sont pas des étrangers."_ he commented dryly.

That one was a bit harder to puzzle out, and I stepped closer a little bit, my brow furrowing.

" _Seeing him like that"…no, uh, " **this** ," I'd have to say he and the bottle are…" uh, um, "not friends", wait, no, "no strangers." That's what he said, "Seeing him like this, I'd have to say he and the bottle are no strangers." Huzzah to me._

Sebastian bowed his head to the earl as his lips curled wryly upwards. _"Même si, le voir incapable d'autodiscipline, je le considère comme un imbécile total ou tout à fait sans vergogne."_ he chuckled softly, and I squinted, but then relaxed as the meaning of the words slowly filtered through my mind.

_"Even so, seeing him incapable of self-discipline makes me think him either an utter fool or perfectly shameless."_

Ciel lifted a corner of the fluffy towel to rub his cheek, muttering to Sebastian in aside. _"He is stricken with an illness even the doctors would be hopeless to cure."_

I bit my lip to stifle a snicker, but someone else was not so restrained. A short laugh escaped from nearby one of the curtained windows, where rain was streaming down the water-flecked panes, and Ciel and Sebastian turned to see Arthur Conan Doyle, sitting in one of the sturdy padded chairs placed there for that purpose, raising a hand too late to hide his involuntary smile. "Ah!"

Ciel smirked and put a finger to his lips. "Shh."

And they toddled off again, leaving me burning alive with curiosity. I quickly strode over to where the author was sitting, cooling his flush of embarrassment with a drink of his own. He didn't notice me approaching, oddly enough, seemingly too tied up in his mental ponderings to realize I was there even when I came to a stop right next to him.

"Yo, can I sit down?" I asked with a tilt of my head, and Doyle jumped and looked up at me.

"O-oh, yes, of course." he stammered, looking very distracted –though thankfully not by me (or my legs). I smiled and put my glass down on the windowsill near one of the empty chairs, before turning around and plopping down into it.

"So," I said brightly as I landed, the cushions bouncing a little and letting out a quiet huff of air from my weight, before I crossed my legs and leaned against the back. "How'd an author from Scotland learn fluent French?"

Doyle rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish as he avoided glancing in my direction. "Well, I did achieve an M.D. four years ago, and part of the curriculum was to learn foreign languages…" he mumbled, staring at his shoes. He then heaved a mournful sigh. "Not that it's done me any good."

"Ah, I'm sure you'll get going eventually." I said flippantly –knowing full well, after all, that he did– and he coughed and looked to the opposite side of me as I absently swung my legs back and forth.

"Ehm. Yes, I suppose." he agreed stiffly, then flushed. "Might I ask, miss, if you, erm…are you and Mister Lau acquainted with each other in some fashion, for you to be wearing…" He made an abortive gesture with one hand at my dress, still without looking in my direction. "…that."

_Well, so much for flying under the Victorian propriety radar._

"We know each other as acquaintances through Earl Phantomhive, but this happened to be the gift of an, uh, friend." I said with a sniff, trying to be as properly-loftily-mannered as I knew how, but faltering all the same as I realized I might implicate that friend of mine as "special friend", of which they were not.

"Oh, do forgive me!" he gasped, jumping in his seat as his hands dropped to his knees and he looked at me in embarrassment. "It's just that something so exotic as that, and his introduction of you, it seemed that there must be a connection…" He trailed off, flushing, and looked away again. "I really must beg your pardon. I cannot believe I was so forward."

That extreme of an apology being, of course, because there were few worse ways to insult a woman in this time period than incorrectly assuming she was –well– _involved_ with a man that she wasn't involved in, and _then_ saying so right to her face.

"Nah, it's okay." I said complacently, half-turning and reaching around my shoulder to grab my wineglass. "Mr. Holmes would be ashamed of you for starting your chain of reasoning with such a faulty link, though."

That got me a shy smile.

"You really did like that story?" he asked wistfully as I turned to face forwards again. His face shadowed as he looked down and plucked at his ink-stained sleeves. "So many have advised me to find a different line of work, perhaps continuing my practice as a doctor…" He heaved a great sigh. "Even though it is all but impossible for me to establish a clientele here in London."

"Plenty of authors that I know of worked more than two jobs at once." I told him firmly, slowly swirling the wine in my glass and meditatively watching the bubbles chase themselves around and around and around within their glass prison. "You're doing it too, aren'tcha? Just keep plowing forward. Maybe-" _Certainly._ "-you'll get your big break at some point in the not-too-far-future."

He sighed again. "I hope so." he said wearily, then brightened a little. "But now that you mention it, my lord the Earl said he enjoyed my story as well. I could hardly believe it!"

 _I believe it._ I thought with a sweatdrop, deadpanning as I remembered Ciel's love and mastery of skullduggery and chicanery in general. Then I realized that Doyle was still talking and hurriedly tuned back in.

"-and, perhaps, maybe I will write another story at some point." he was concluding reluctantly. "Though I'm not sure it will be about Mr. Holmes. Historical novels are what I'd really love to pen."

"Well, I'd read 'em." I said with a shrug. "Though perhaps maybe not the historical novels. I'm much more of a-" I thought that I vaguely remembered that the word fantasy as it related to the genre did not exist quite yet, and quickly supplied a different series of words "-um, supernatural and adventure lover."

Doyle blinked, looking surprised. "Really? That's a bit of a heady topic for a young woman."

My eye twitched. _Must not punch another party guest._

"Any favorites?"

At those words I froze mid-swirl as my wine slowly churned to a halt, mentally flailing. What the hell had been published by now, and what hadn't!? _Dracula?_ Was that in the 1890s, or before? Um, maybe the _Jungle Books?_ Or, ah, _Frankenstein?_ Fuuuuuuck…not like this, I couldn't out myself like _this_.

"U-um…" _Think think think think._ "Well, I've always liked…C- _Carmilla_ …?"

He blinked twice as I hung on tenterhooks, subtly biting my lip as my bandaged nails dug into the plush padding of the chair. Would he recognize it or not? If he didn't, maybe I could pass it off as being an obscure American folk tale…

 _"Carmilla_ , eh? That's a bit of an, erm." He coughed. "… _dark_ , story."

I went limp. _Oh, thank you sweet gods._

Then I suddenly remembered that Carmilla had a lot of subtly implied quasi-lesbian subtext, and promptly wanted to bash my head into the back of my chair.

_Actually, I take that "thank-you" back…_

"Well, while the story itself is intriguing, I spent a fair amount of time in Germany and Italy recently, and the Austrian Empire as you know is very close to both of these regions, so I was interested to see…"

_***Time Skip***_

The grandfather clock standing pride-of-place between two curtains sleeting with rain _clonged_ softly, sounding the hour, and I blinked in surprise as I looked at it and realized it was eleven o'clock in the evening. Time had just flown by as Professor Arthur Conan Doyle and I had lunged into a spirited discussion about the various intricacies of Germanic literature and language –he maintained that while the _Sturm und Drang style of poetry was pogniant in its own language, it was futile to try and translate it over into English, while I argued, using Gottfried August Bürger's _Lenore_ (my own mention of _Carmilla_ had reminded me of it, since it was another pivotal early work of vampire fiction), that as long as the onomatopoeia was maintained as well as the rhyme that there was no reason for any such difficulty._

__

To my great surprise, I initially had the advantage over Doyle, as my grasp of the German language was better (that was the surprise), but his insider's knowledge of the current era was proving to be my undoing –especially since he apparently had had a copy of the (to me) horribly dated translation of the ballad with him in a magazine in his pocket…though luckily to save my argument, it was also bound with the original.

__

"Yeah, but consider, um-" I'd stared at the (mis)translation, then the German words, for a very long time. "Ah… _And the martial throng, with laugh and song/Spoke of their homes as they rode along/And clank, clank, clank! came every rank/With the trumpet-sound that rose and sank._ Doesn't that sound better?"

__

He'd mumbled something and leveled a _look_ at the page. "The German language is an infernal tangle, isn't it?"

__

That had led onto another discussion of our relation to it, which had somehow led down the path of relatives themselves _("My wife and I had a daughter just this January! She's the most beautiful little thing –we named her Mary Louise, after her mother…")_ and as the clock rang, a rousing debate on the subject of heredity.

__

A loud snore punctuated the sonorous clanging, and I sighed as we both looked to see von Siemens drowsing beside Earl Grey on one of the sofas, a stack of wineglass and almost a dozen glass steins lying empty before him on the table. A flustered and squeaking Mey-rin was tucked under one arm, and Ran-Mao was leaning over the couch on his other side, watching his relaxed face intently.

__

"Has Lord Siemens fallen asleep? Ciel yawned, rising from a chair nearby, and Sebastian clicked over to him as Phelps sweatdropped from where he sat across from Earl Grey and von Siemens with Woodley.

__

"Yes, so it would seem…"

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"Sebastian." Ciel commanded languidly, taking his cane in hand. "Take him to his room. I'll be retiring myself."

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Tapping over to the door as Sebastian hoisted von Siemens over his shoulder like a child playing piggyback, Ciel then turned to address the rest of us in a slightly louder voice. "Forgive me. I will be taking my leave now as well."

__

"Oh?" Lau mused. "Lord Earl, off to bed already?"

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_The hell do you mean **already**?_ I thought, giving the clock an askance look. It was certainly past _my_ normal bedtime, and I was four years older than Ciel.

__

Ciel dipped his head slightly with a smirk. "It's rather past bedtime for a child such as I. Please stay and enjoy yourselves at your leisure, everyone." he said smoothly, then turned and sailed through the door with Sebastian close on his heels. It shut with a gentle _clack_ as everyone promptly turned their attention back inwards, and Grimsby smiled and fingered the ironed lapel of his suit.

__

"Shall we have a game of billiards?" he suggested to the rest of us, and Doyle perked up noticeably as Irene softly applauded from beside her partner.

__

"Oh, that sounds fun!" she chimed, and I got to my feet at almost the same moment as Arthur Conan Doyle did, joining the others as Phelps fidgeted nervously.

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"I should have brought my own cue!" he blurted regretfully, and Doyle blinked in pleasant surprise.

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"Oh-hoh! You must be good then!" he said, and Phelps squirmed and tugged at his collar, looking bashful, as the small group headed for the doors.

__

"I think we'll retire to the lounge for some drinks." Lau said cheerfully, draping his arms over Ran-Mao's shoulders as she nodded silently.

__

Woodley cleared his throat brusquely and stood, smoothing down the front of his impeccable suit. "I will join you as well, if you don't mind. I'm curious to see how your shipping business differs from our own."

__

I was now presented with a slight conundrum. See, I knew that someone was going to die, someone other than Sebastian…probably von Siemens, when I thought it over as hard as I could. _Several_ someones would die, as a matter of fact, if I remembered correctly. And, obviously, since I didn't remember _when_ they would be killed and I wanted to keep from being accused of their murders, I needed to have a solid, airtight alibi at any and all times for the rest of the party. Which meant that, unlike how I wanted to just go up to me and Mey-rin's room and curl up with a good book before going to bed for a well-deserved rest, I absolutely positively could not do that right now. I needed to stay with one of these two groups until they either split up or I needed to head to bed to stop my eyelids from functioning.

__

Hence, my problem.

__

On one hand, the group heading to play billiards had Doyle in it, who'd already proved to be a good conversationalist, but on the other hand, it also had Earl Grey, who was far too creepy and nosy for me to feel comfortable in sticking around in his vicinity for long periods of time.

__

On the other hand, the group heading to go drink and talk was smaller, which soothed my introvert's heart, but it also included Woodley –whose attitude and general demeanor I mildly disliked and distrusted already– and Lau who, quite frankly, made me nervous. It was just so _hard_ to tell what he was _thinking_ , even (and especially) in regards to how useful I would be to him as a pawn. It was hard not to put anything past him; for instance, he _probably_ wouldn't blackmail into working for him by virtue of his knowledge about my magic, but he _might_ , or he _probably_ would have lost interest in my skill by now, but he _might_ not, and quite frankly, I had enough on my plate to worry about already.

__

I would've flipped a coin if I had one, but this dress didn't have pockets, so I just screwed up my face and hurried after the larger group. Earl Grey was just one person that I found mildly uncomfortable (his blank grey eyes were so creepy!) and he could always be distracted by the plethora of other people. Haha. Brilliant.

__

_Holmes would be so proud._

__

I wondered, as I scurried after the group, how on earth they were going to _find_ the billiard room in such an enormous mansion –I didn't even know where it was, and I lived here– when they didn't take Sebastian or even Mey-rin with them. My explorations of this enormous pile of stucco and wood were more or less limited to how to find my way down to the stables, the kitchen, the dining room, and the library, though I probably could –if pushed– track down Ciel's study and, obviously, where Mey-rin and I slept.

__

However, the little knot of people swung right almost immediately, to my surprise, and entered through a door very close to the dining room as I belatedly caught up with them, realizing the genius of whatever architects that had originally made this place. The billiards room, the lounge, and the ladies parlor were all places that were in use _only_ after a party or gathering, ergo, they should be placed near the dining room for more ease and quickness of travel. Following that chain of reasoning, furthermore, I hazarded a tentative guess that probably _all_ mansions –or buildings large enough to include these rooms– were laid out in a similar fashion, for the group to so quickly find the room with such confidence.

__

As we spilled into the room, I was surprised to note that Irene immediately withdrew to the side and gracefully sat herself down in one of the cushy-looking armchairs, before folding her gloved hands in her lap and looking up at the men gathering around the billiard table with every evidence of preparing to enjoy herself. I was so struck by this that I moved around the others and joined her, sitting in one of the gloriously padded chairs beside her own.

__

"You aren't playing?" I asked, and Irene looked at me as if startled by the question.

__

"Why –goodness, no." she said, her hands fluttering a little in in her lap. "Whyever would I?"

__

_And the brilliant traveler from the future sticks her foot in her mouth again. Glorious. Why couldn't I have paid more attention to the nuances of Victorian culture when I could've from the outside!?_

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"Well, I mean…" I scratched my cheek awkwardly. "Why come in if not –if you aren't going to play?"

__

She smiled, and leaned over to lightly pat my hand, as though reassuring me and comforting me about my stupidity, though it made me jump a little in surprise at the sudden contact. "Grimsby's playing, and I do so love to watch the game. What of you?"

__

"I, uh…" I looked at the others inspecting their cues and chatting freely as they did. "…is there a different between, um, American pool, and billiards? 'Cause I know how to play the former, but…" I sweatdropped. "…definitely not the latter."

__

"I believe there is." she laughed apologetically, and leaned back into her chair as I sighed and slumped in mine, resigning myself to a very boring few hours.

__

"Your dress is very lovely." Irene said after a few moments, turning to face me a little in her chair and placing her hands in her lap again, as though following a cue. From what little I _did_ know of Victorian customs, she probably was. "Is it real silk?"

__

"Uh, yeah." I said, self-consciously smoothening my hand over my lap. I supposed that as an actress, Irene would not be as stiff and self-restrained as most Victorians in terms of costuming and dress, and therefore wasn't as perturbed about my legs. After all, by Victorian standards, ballet dancers worked rather more than half naked. "A friend of mine gave it to me as a gift. For my birthday."

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"They must be wealthy indeed, to be able to afford genuine oriental silk." she commented in a friendly fashion, her limpid eyes moving to my throat and widening in admiration. "And is that white jade?"

__

Reflexively, I touched the smooth, cold stone, squirming a little uncomfortably in my seat. "Uh, yeah, I think so. So, um, what about your dress?"

__

She smiled gently and was about to answer, when there was a loud _clack_ from the billiard table and we both turned to look. Irene beamed and applauded, though the sound was dull and soft from the gloves muffling her palms. "Well done, oh, well done, Grimsby!" she chirped, like clockwork, before turning back to me. "I actually had the gown bespoken specifically for this party-" She flushed daintily and put a hand to her cheek. "- and Grimsby insisted on paying for it himself –he's so kind to me– and-"

__

I realized that this was probably leading into a long, though mostly likely illuminating, conversation about Victorian fashion, and privately resigned myself to keeping my heavy eyelids open as I leaned in close to her and put my elbow on the armrest of the chair to better balance myself while listening.

__

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_***Time Skip***_

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_  
_

__

_"-waaaah!"_

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"Hnn?" My head bobbed as it slipped off my hand before I hastily straightened my neck and pulled myself upright again, watching the men gathered around the billiards table lower their cues and look towards the door in mild surprise. My eyes were still thick with drowsiness –I'd been half-dozing for the last hour– and my head was foggy, so it took me a few seconds to realize that the sound hadn't been made by any of us, nor was it in this room, and that it had come from a distant part of the house. That was more than long enough for a frantic banging to start up, equally far-off, like someone pounding their fists on wood, and I faintly heard Mey-rin's high-pitched voice raised in agitation.

__

_Uh-oh._

__

"What the deuce?" Grimsby muttered as he slowly lowered his cue, and Earl Grey laid his against the edge of the table and started for the door.

__

"We'll soon sort this out." he scoffed, loosening his sword in its sheathe. Compelled by pack mentality and the increasing urgency of the far-off cries, the rest of us hastened to follow behind. Woodley, Lau, and Ran-Mao had started out of another doorway in the same hallway as ours at almost the same time, and the entire crowd of party guests, still led by Earl Grey, rushed towards the sounds of what I assumed to be Mey-rin pounding on the door and crying out, what was rapidly becoming clear, _"Lord Siemens!"_

__

Earl Grey led us flawlessly without error –probably because the only chandeliers that were lit were the ones that led to our destination– onto the hallway where Sebastian, who held a white, glazed porcelain pitcher, and Mey-rin, who was hammering her fists on a door, stood. "Something wrong? What's all the fuss?" he asked as we came even, and Sebastian swiftly handed the pitcher to a startled Mey-rin, who only just turned to receive it in time and juggled the water-filled pitcher uncertainly in her hands for several seconds before solidifying her grip.

__

"Let us kick in the door." the raven-haired butler stated smoothly, taking a half-step back and cocking his hip to lean all of his weight on one foot in preparation.

__

**BAM!**

__

With an explosive sound of splintering wood and wrenching metal, Sebastian's foot flashed out and the thick, solid wooden door was sent flying all the way off if its hinges, landing on the plush carpeting with a _thud_.

__

"Lo-" Mey-rin started to shout, peeking around the edge of the door, but broke off with a gasp as the assembled crowd let out a series of cries as they saw what was within, Irene pressing both hands to her mouth as Doyle jolted as if struck by lightning.

__

And speaking of, a barrage of thunder sounded almost directly over our heads as lightning flashed through the window, whose curtains were half-drawn, casting a sharp white glow into the dim room and highlighting the stiffened body of Georg von Siemens, still in his evening dress, who was lying collapsed in the armchair by the fireplace with his arms draped limply over the armrests, his hands almost brushing the floor. His white shirtfront was considerably bloodied, making a chill slide down my spine as I looked at that stiffened, unnatural pose, half-remembering a few lines from one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories.

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_"Beside this table, on the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott clad in a long grey dressing-gown, his bare ankles protruding beneath, and his feet thrust into red heelless Turkish slippers.…His chin was cocked upward and his eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid stare at the corner of the ceiling."_

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"Uhn…" The sight was apparently too much for Patrick Phelps as well, who collapsed limply in a dead faint as Woodley barely caught him before he hit the ground.

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"Ah! Mister Phelps!"

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"Excuse me!" Doyle blurted, shoving his way through to the front as he lunged towards the supine man. He knelt by the armchair as all seemed to hold their breath, taking von Siemens's arm and pushing his sleeve up to expose his wrist. He pressed two fingers just beneath the ending curve of the banker's thumb, feeling for a pulse as the rest of us, irresistibly drawn to the scene of tragedy, moved tentatively into the room.

__

"H-he's dead!" the future author of some of the greatest detective stories the world would ever know gasped in horror, his words punctuated by a great crash and roar of thunder, and Woodley half-rose from where he had been laying Phelps down on the ground.

__

"What!?"

__

"No…" Irene whimpered, her breath catching in her throat as she pressed her fingertips to her lips once again, as though to guard them from any forthcoming shrieks.

__

"What was that voice just…" Bardroy's voice came from the hall, and I looked over my shoulder to see he and Finny enter the room. "- _woah!"_ the cook finished with a gasp, upon seeing the corpse.

__

"I-is this man dead?!" Finny asked, rushing over, and Doyle nodded absently as he straightened back up, his eyes still upon von Siemens's body.

__

"Yes. The hemorrhage from the chest wound was most likely fatal." he reported sadly, and I popped open the collar of my dress while fanning myself a little, my palms feeling suddenly sweaty, much to my confusion. Surely the sight of a dead body couldn't be bothering me _that_ much, right? I'd seen them before, and in far more stressing and stressful conditions. "I can't be certain because of how dark it is, but-"

__

"Hey. Ain't this room kinda hot?" Bardroy muttered from just behind me, which helped me put my finger on the sudden source of my discomfort as I took several steps away from the roaring fireplace.

__

"Yes, it is." Sebastian acknowledged from beside him. "I heated up the rooms in advance, but perhaps he felt a chill."

__

There was a glow from my peripheral left, and I turned to see Ciel wearing only a dressing gown over his nightshirt, accompanied by Tanaka carrying a candlestick, sleepily rubbing his eye in the doorway. "I say, what on earth is meaning of all this racket?" he asked languidly, and Sebastian gave a short bob of his head.

__

"Young master." he began, but then Ciel spotted the corpse and let out a short, stifled exclamation.

__

"Von Siemens!" he said, somewhat redundantly, and sent an unreadable look at Sebastian, who returned it. I may have been the only one to notice the fact, as everyone else was busy staring at the corpse, and furthermore, as I narrowed my eyes uncertainly, I could've imagined it amongst the odd, uncertain, flickering light of the flames in the fireplace, the only light in the entire room other than the small candelabra. Lord knows I was usually ascribing all sorts of sneaky activity to the Victorian twosome.

__

"I-in any case," Grimsby started, looking considerably shaken by the whole ordeal. "-let's just leave things untouched as they are until the Yard gets here-"

__

"No." Bardroy spoke up suddenly, sticking a cigarette in his mouth as if to soothe himself with the familiar draw of nicotine. "We should move the corpse right away. I don't wanna put it like this, but flesh rots faster than you might think. Even if we douse the fire now, the corpse'll go right off if it's kept by the hearth."

__

Irene wobbled, her face going ashen. "Flesh…rots, you say…" she said faintly, and Grimsby started, moving to support her as she threatened to collapse.

__

"Irene!"

__

"He's right." Doyle said solemnly, looking down at von Siemens's body with sorrow-shadowed eyes. "I also believe that we should place the corpse in a cool, dark place until the experts can examine it."

__

"Then let us relocate him to the cellar until the gentlemen of the Yard arrive." Sebastian said briskly, turning to subtly jerk his chin at the young blonde gardener. "Finny, bring us a cot."

__

Finny went, and the rest of us watched in silence as he and Bardroy arranged the body on the cot, lifted it, and carried it out the door. Doyle went to go see to the still-comatose Mr. Phelps, taking off his suit jacket as he did. I continued to wave a hand in front of my face as I edged over to lean against the wall beside the door, hoping to get a breeze from the hallway and wishing fervently that someone would think to douse the fire before I either fell over or sweated a stain into my lovely and probably expensive silk dress.

__

"But that won't be anytime soon, now will it?" Lau suddenly chirped, unnervingly picking up the conversation just where we had left off as he sauntered over to the half-curtained window, Ran-Mao in tow. He turned to face the rest is us as he tugged the right-hand velvet curtain a little further open, looking out at the rain slashing down against the windowpanes as Ran-Mao peeked across his chest. "I mean, have you seen this storm?"

__

"…but that means we can't leave this place either, doesn't it?" Woodley gasped in outrage, starting forward, and Lau raised an eyebrow.

__

"You only realized that now?" he asked as though exasperated, then smiled and shrugged impudently at the diamond merchant. "Anyway, it's fine. We all planned to stay the night anyway." he said cheerily, and Woodley spluttered.

__

"It's far from fine!" he gasped. "A murder was just committed here-"

__

"Indeed." Lau agreed, his smile vanishing like ice on a pond in spring as his demeanor abruptly darkened. "Right now, this manor is truly an isolated island in the middle of nowhere."

__

Thunder rumbled overhead, and Earl Grey rapped a finger against the hilt of his sword. "Therefore, it's highly likely that the murderer is still inside the manor or within the grounds." he mused, continuing where Lau had ominously left off, sending a wave of murmurs throughout the room. He slanted his marble-like eyes sideways, before looking at the rest of us head-on. "Or perhaps I should say…thinking it through logically, the murderer is one of us?"

__

An instant uproar met his words.

__

"Wha- why must it be one of us!? What kind of sick joke is that!?" Grimsby yelled, with Woodley backing him up, for once.

__

"Yes, that's right!"

__

Doyle coughed from where he was kneeling by the unconscious Phelps, trying to reason with the other shouting guests. "First off, the majority of us have just met one another, and-"

__

"Ah!" Irene suddenly exclaimed, putting a curled fist to her mouth as her brow furrowed as if in deep thought, making the rest of us fall silent in expectation.

__

"Miss Diaz?" Sebastian asked courteously, but the opera singer first turned to Mey-rin.

__

"When we arrived at the door to this room, it was locked, wasn't it?" she asked, Mey-rin blinked behind her thick glasses.

__

"Now that you mention it, you're right, miss. It was." she confirmed in surprise, and Irene frowned a little.

__

"Then someone could have entered the room from a window, and after locking the door to stall for time, escaped the same way they came, couldn't they?" she asked innocently, and Earl Grey strode over to the door.

__

"But wouldn't you expect there to be footprints if someone came in from out of this downpour? And let's not forget, this room is on the second floor." he scoffed, reaching out and rattling the delicate golden handles. "The window's locked, too."

__

Grimsby put a hand to his chin. "Then somebody locked the door from the corridor and then ran off after all…"

__

"That is impossible." Sebastian spoke up unexpectedly, drawing everyone's attention as he held up a small golden key. "The keys in this manor all belong to warded locks from where the manor was first built. The keys themselves are of very complicated make, so without a master locksmith on hand, duplicating them is impossible." A faint smile shadowed his pale lips, before he nodded to the shattered remains of the door and the unwarped frame of the doorway "Moreover, the keys are stored in a locked storage cabinet, over which I, the butler, stand guard, so no one can take the keys out as they please. In addition to the warded lock, the doors are also fitted with a latch on the inside for convenience's sake, so they may be locked from within."

__

I surreptitiously glanced down at my feet, and sure enough, the mangled remains of a drawn metal latch lay gleaming near one of the outer edges of the door.

__

"In a situation where the keys cannot be removed from the cabinet, it is _only_ possible to lock the doors _from inside_." Sebastian added firmly. "In other words…"

__

"-we're looking at a locked-room murder, hmm?" Lau chuckled from over by the window as a shocked silence fell over the group, broken by Woodley's blustering scoff.

__

"That's not possible…this isn't some novel!" he barked, and Ciel yawned behind his palm.

__

"Indeed. You'd never hear the end of it from the public if an unsophisticated locked-room drama like this was ever published." he said lazily as he lowered his hand, making Woodley blink.

__

"Eh?"

__

Ciel smirked and glanced at Arthur Conan Doyle. "Aren't you of the same opinion, professor?" he asked coyly.

__

Doyle gasped. "Ah! Now I see…yes, it is possible if you use that." he murmured to himself, putting a hand to his chin, and Lau cocked his head.

__

"What do you mean?"

__

"Needle and thread." Ciel said succinctly, closing his eye, to general murmurs of astonishment. "As Sebastian mentioned, this door can only be locked from the inside. However, you can easily lock it from the outside with a needle and thread." He opened his eye again, gesturing a little to enforce his point. "It goes like this: first you jam the threaded needle by the raised latch to fix it. Then you leave the room, having pulled the thread under the door. Last, if you tug on the thread carefully so it doesn't break, and dislodge the needle, the latch will fall, thereby locking the door. If you retrieve the needle and thread from beneath the door just so, you leave behind no proof. And disposing of a needle and thread is easy enough."

__

He made a dismissive gesture with his hand, his mouth curling in a disdainful sneer. "It's a simple and boring trick that's been used over and over in mystery novels. But the murderer isn't looking to write a novel. This trick serves more as a _practical diversion_ , wouldn't you say?"

__

Lau tapped his chin with his curled fist, meditatively. "I do see now how you can create a locked room that way, but…

__

"…doesn't that mean it's possible anybody could have murdered him?" Doyle finished uncertainly.

__

"We did no such thing!" Grimsby barked immediately, putting an arm around the trembling Irene's shoulders and pointing at Woodley with his other hand. "It must have been somebody else!"

__

"It wasn't me either!" the businessman spluttered in outrage, jabbing a finger of his own at the ginger. "Y-you're the most suspicious one among us! You were quarreling with the lord at the banquet!"

__

"Don't falsely accuse me, old man! Who'd murder a man over such a trivial thing! Besides, you-"

__

"Come come, you two," Lau said calmly, flapping his capricious sleeves at the two men soothingly. "We just need to calm down and verify everyone's alibis." He shrugged with a sunny smile. "Lord Siemens was murdered after he retired to his room…or to put it more accurately, he was killed after he rang the bell for the servants and before Master Butler and company arrived at his door. Thus you only need have an alibi for that time frame."

__

"Irene and I were in the billiard room." Grimsby answered slowly, deflating, and she bobbed her head anxiously.

__

"Yes." she quavered, her opera-gloved hands trembling as she held them against her chest. I felt a little sorry for her; no matter how eccentric actors and signers were in Victorian society, this clearly demonstrated that the mindset and, to be frank, mental fragility and limitations of their age still applied to them regardless.

__

"I was there too." Earl Grey said languidly, raising one black-gloved hand.

__

"I as well." Arthur Conan Doyle said, halfway through undoing the buttons at Phelps's throat as the weedy peer groaned faintly. "And Mister Phelps and Miss Thompson too. After Lord Siemens went to bed and until the commotion occurred, we were all in the billiard room. None of us left the room in that time." he added before I could come to my own defense, and Ciel turned to the innocently beaming Lau.

__

"What were you two doing?" he asked warily, and Lau blinked.

__

"Nn?" His smile slipped a little as he casually waved a hand at Ciel. "We were drinking in the lounge with Mister Woodley. Riiiight, Ran-Mao~?" he trilled as he clasped her to him, and she nodded woodenly.

__

"Yes! We were together until the racket began." Woodley agreed hastily, looking eager to clear his name. "And I believe we had Master Butler bring us some more liquor after midnight because we ran out of drinks?"

__

Sebastian nodded shortly. "Yes, I brought that over around 12.10."

__

Mey-rin jumped as attention suddenly turned to her and the three others, and Finny swallowed hard. "W-we were cleaning up, all five of us, we were!" she squeaked, waving her hands in front of herself defensively a little bit.

__

"To begin with, we didn't even know which room von Siemens was staying in!" Grimsby defended, throwing out his hands as he finally began to think logically. "It would take ages to find him in this huge manor, am I right?"

__

Earl Grey frowned pensively. "Which leaves…"

__

As one, the thought seemed to strike everyone else, and the other guests turned in unison to see Ciel, standing between Sebastian and Tanaka, blink in shock.

__

Lau smiled as gently as a father trying to soothe his children to sleep. "Forgive my insolence, Lord Earl, but what were you doing at that time?" he asked sweetly, and Ciel glared at him with an icy huff, then, every inch of him an English nobleman, closed his eyes and bowed his head.

__

"I am indeed the only one without an alibi, but I had no reason to murder His Lordship." he said coolly, and Earl Grey clicked his tongue with a snaky sort of smirk.

__

"Ehhhh, really?"

__

The younger earl opened his eye to renew the frosty intensity of his irritated, disdainful glare at his older counterpart. "What is it?"

__

"You can't say you had no reason with absolute certainty." Lau piped up cheerfully, throwing out his sleeve-covered hand a little bit. "The reason for which one person murders another is typically inconceivable to other folk. People will never be able to understand another's mind, regardless of how much research genius scholars collect on the subject."

__

He shrugged and leaned back a little as Ran-Mao rested her head against his shoulder. "Besides, your company has a branch in Germany, right? You might have had disputes over some documents with him, a board member of a large bank…" He touched his fingertips to his chest as his sleeve slid down his wrist, exposing his pale hand. "-though we'd know nothing of such matters."

__

Okay, it was time to step in. I might not know the exact details of Ciel's plans for this night, or how they were rapidly being readjusted to this situation even as we spoke, but I just had to put my fifty cents into the conversation. My sense of fair play was aroused and wounded.

__

"Pardon, but aren't we, uh, begging the question?" I asked loudly, flushing a little bit as literally _everyone_ in the room turned to look at me expectantly. That much direct attention was a bit intimidating, even for me.

__

"What makes you say such a thing, Miss Thompson?" Earl Grey asked with a haughty raise of his silver eyebrow, and I coughed and nodded to the corpse.

__

_Modern forensics, don't fail me now._

__

"Method of death, for one thing. As a noble, C- er, _Lord Phantomhive_ , might be a bit accomplished in the art of fencing, but for a child to inflict a fatal wound on a grown man without _any_ signs of defensive injuries on _either_ of them is a bit suspicious, don't you think?" I asked, feeling heat rise in my face as everyone continued to stare with varying degrees of intense interest. Good god, this was way worse than presenting some lame-brain school project in front of class. "And furthermore, um, why would Lord Siemens be sitting down at the time of receiving the fatal wound?"

__

Given my knowledge of Victorian customs, if Ciel had actually, for some reason, entered the room while von Siemens was alive with the intent to kill him, the lord would've stood up to greet him, even if he was still shitfaced drunk.

__

"Mightn't he have been standing before the chair, and fallen down when he was stabbed?" Irene suggested delicately, and I cocked my head and glanced over the carpet.

__

"Maybe, yeah, but don't you think with the volume of blood on his chest, some of it would have dripped onto the floor?" I said, seeing no telltale red or browning droplets on the expensive plush wool, and Woodley scoffed, folding his arms across his chest.

__

"This is all ridiculous. Lord Siemens was heavily drunk –he was no doubt dozing in his chair when the murderer attacked! Also-"

__

"P-please wait!" Finny cried plaintively, cutting the both of us off fast, as he seemed quite on the verge of tears. "I don't quite get the complicated stuff, but…but! But young master would never do such a-"

__

"Finny." Ciel said sharply, then sighed and waved a hand. "It's fine. Step back."

__

The blonde gardener obeyed with a suitably chastised look, and there was silence in the room for several moments.

__

"…what I want is a guarantee." Earl Grey finally said ominously, breaking the silence that was punctuated only by the barrages of thunder, flashes of lightning, and the constant drum of rain.

__

"A guarantee?" Irene blinked uncertainly.

__

Earl Grey turned to look at her with narrowed eyes. "A guarantee that we'll be able to make it out of here alive." he said in a low voice, and the opera singer blinked.

__

"What…do you mean by that?" she quavered, and Earl Grey craned his neck to look behind himself through the window he stood by, watching the rain stream down.

__

" 'Cos this here is a manor under the control of the killer, right? And until the storm passes, we're stuck." He turned to look down at the rest of us again as an especially sharp burst of lightning made his pale features stand out in stark relief. "What happens if _all our lips are forcibly sealed_ before the storm ends?"

__

Another shocked murmur ran throughout the room as Irene clutched onto Grimsby's arm with a small cry and Doyle stumbled back, looking pale. I saw a bead of sweat run down Woodley's squared, stubborn jaw, and I had no doubt that had Phelps been conscious, he would have been felled once again. Personally, I was not overly frightened unless Sebastian was the culprit, since I had a gun, pointy knives, and a plethora of magic (though not much knowledge of how to apply it).

__

"Ah. Then what about…we confine him?" Lau suggested with an innocent smile, jabbing his pointer finger upward. "Y'know, lock him up! 'Kay?"

__

"LOCK HIM UP?! OUR YOUNG MASTER!?" the three servants yelled, and Lau gave a sunny smile.

__

" 'Cos I'm soooooo scared!" he chirped, and Sebastian glanced down at Ciel as his young master gave a tediously put-upon sigh.

__

"If that will satisfy you, then do it." he drawled, and Earl Grey snapped his fingers.

__

"His Lordship's room won't work, an aristocrat's quarters usually has some secret means of escape. My place has them too!" he laid down immediately, and Sebastian hooded his eyes wearily.

__

"Then how about we keep watch over the young master while seeing to you-" he began, but Lau cut him off innocently, putting his two index fingers together in an X.

__

"That won't do either. 'Cos you lot might let the Earl get away, hm~?" he cooed as Bardroy shot him a hacked-off lot and Finny sniffled back the last of his tears. I stuck my tongue out at the Chinaman when no one was looking and went to go stand with the other servants.

__

"So I believe the best alternative is to have one of the guests stay with His Lordship and keep an eye on him." Earl Grey said smartly, rapping a finger against the gilded hilt of his sword. Grimsby immediately put his arms around the shivering opera singer.

__

"You can count me out! There's no way I can leave Irene alone!" he barked, and Woodley jolted, looking thoroughly discomforted.

__

"I-I don't want to myself!" he spluttered, and Ran-Mao bobbed her head like a doll as Lau affected a playful look of dismay.

__

"Me too. I can't even bear to think about it." he said with mocking fear. "I'm so scaaaared."

__

"I don't want to do it either," Earl Grey snapped. "-but someone's got to…"

__

_Gaaah, this is so stupid! Why can't I remember the whodunnit?_ I thought to myself with a mental whine, watching the others bicker about who was going to watch Ciel for the time being without really listening to the conversation. It was _sorta kinda_ important, because, after all, all it took was a moment of inattention for someone to kill you no matter how much shiny weaponry you had or how hair-trigger your senses, and my mere presence here initiated a wildcard into the deck, so to speak. Butterfly wingbeats and all that –it was an enduring fear of mine that my mere presence in this fictional world would screw up the universe I ways I didn't _intend_ to screw it up, like changing the plot enough to throw me for a complete and utter loop and leave me flailing in midair before I sank under and drowned.

__

_Eugh. Bad mental image. Focus on the murder case._

__

"-and so!" Lau said happily as I snapped back in, sidestepping to clap his hand on Doyle's shoulder as the author jumped and nearly shrieked. "It's in your hands, professor!"

__

"EEH!?"

__

"Make sure you keep a close watch on His Lordship so he doesn't run off now!" the Chinaman added, wagging his finger playfully.

__

"N-no, this can't beee…" Doyle whimpered in a strangled voice as something seemed to occur to Earl Grey as he blinked and twitched.

__

"Oh yes. I have something useful loaded on my carriage." he said aloud, then swiveled to point a finger at Finny and Bardroy. "You there. Will you go get it for me?"

__

"Then we'll break for the night." Ciel said, putting his hands on his hips. "Sebastian. Show everyone to their rooms."

__

"As you wish, sir." Sebastian murmured with a bow, placing a hand over his chest. "Now then, I shall take you to your rooms, ladies and gentlemen. If you will kindly follow me this way…"

__

I exchanged glances with Mey-rin, and the two of us, along with Finny and Bardroy, headed off unprompted and unguided to our bedrooms in the downstairs portion of the manor.

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 3.48 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 22nd, 2019, USA Central Time


	31. That Butler, Fugue (Part 2)

_Arya's POV:_

"D-do you think that the young master really did it?" Mey-rin stammered fretfully as we got dressed for bed, and I yawned, pulling my vibrant red dress up over my head and shivering at a little the feel of the silk slithering and sliding against my bare skin. It was so _weird_.

"Fuck if I know." I mumbled, my eyelids feeling heavy with the lack of sleep I was getting. Why did the _Victorians_ of all people party like a bunch of goddamn college frat bros? I mean, I'd heard about the nobility "hours" in period novels before, how they considered rising at ten to be "early", but this party fairly well served to drive the point home. This point was a stake in the heart of a vampire, it was driven in so well. The pointiest of points. Driven in by Abraham van Helsing himself. With a mallet. A mallet the side of Nora Valkyrie's warhammer.

_Doo-dum. You have reached: Point of Last Waking Coherence. Nonsensical literary metaphors and references are being employed. Bodily shutdown imminent. Please turn system off and restart in roughly twelve standard hours._

Folding it and setting the dress at the foot of my bed, I groaned as I wearily pulled my worn black tank-top over my arms and head, trying to pick up the thread of conversation where we'd left off. "I mean, I'd put it past him. Er, not put it past him. He's sneaky. And stuff. But I dun' think he didit. This time."

Buckling my army fatigues around my waist, then proceeded to I collapse gratefully onto my bed with a soft _whoof_ and a contented groan. I regretted everything that had led me up to this point, including my stupid voyeuristic urge to see all of the fandom stuff unfold live-action. I _could_ have gotten sleep instead, wonderful, warm, snuggly sleep.

"Still, it's quite a bit frightening, innit?" Mey-rin persisted nervously, taking off her frilly cap and undoing her dual pigtails. She had already changed into her nightgown, a plain affair of white cotton with long, loose sleeves that were buttoned tightly around her wrists. It was odd to see her without her maid uniform, and I turned my head to watch lazily as she stood before our shared dresser drawers and began putting her hairpieces away. "Someone being murdered right in our very manor!"

 _Where was this reaction when the Noah's Ark Circus came to call?_ I thought with a mental snort, feeling another another gaping yawn stretch my jaw as I watched Mey-rin's fingers tremble a little as she passed a brush slowly through her cherry-red hair. Then again, those guys had come here to attack and kill us, and it had been a fair (mostly) fight that had taken them out of commission. Killing someone with a gun pointed to your head –metaphorically speaking– was a lot less stressful than someone randomly dropping dead in your own home, after all…especially under mysterious murdering circumstances.

"Ciel n' Sebastian'll find out who did it." I mumbled with a shorter yawn, wriggling my way under the fluffy duvet and twisting until it covered me completely, legs and bare feet included. "Always do."

_If they don't know already, of course._

"Yes, you're right." Mey-rin sighed, with an air of finally convincing herself of her own security, and hair properly brushed, put the wooden-backed hairbrush down and toddled over to her own bed. She got in much more elegantly (and properly) than I had, before sitting up under her covers to slide off her thick glasses and put them on her bedside table. "Our young master and Mister Sebastian never let us down, no they don't!"

"Mm." I grunted in drowsy agreement, closing my eyes and letting the soft wash of the rain against our windowpanes lull me into clinging, drowsy slumber as I heard Mey-rin lean over in her bed and blow out the candle.

_***Time Skip***_

"GYAAAH!"

**Crash!**

My eyes shot open, and even I cursed myself for not setting up something as basic as a box of magic wards around our room I was twisting upright in bed and yanking my combat knife out from its sheath on my leg, throwing the covers off of me with my other hand to free my movements.

"WHAT IS IT?!"

A groan from the floor alerted me, and I slowly looked down to see Mey-rin through the gloom, twisted ridiculously as though she had fallen out out bed and fumbling blearily on the ground amongst her tumbled bedclothes and the overturned nightstand for –what I assumed to be– her glasses.

"Uh…"

**Tap. Tap tap tap tap.**

A quiet but imperious rapping at the door permeated in our now all-but-silent room, the only other sound besides the rustle of the bedclothes as Mey-rin pawed around to find her glasses –which honestly wouldn't help her much, as it was so dark in the room now that I had to squint to even pick out her outline– and the steady patter of the rain against our high window.

"Just someone knocking us up, yes it is." I heard her say soothingly. "You go back to sleep, Miss Arya. I'll answer it."

I lowered my knife slowly, but swung my legs out over the edge of the mattress, shivering as my bare feet touched the cool floorboards.

"A completely unknown element knocking on our door in the middle of the night after someone's been murdered… _and you were gonna **answer** it!?"_ I whisper-hissed incredulously, staring at her groping figure in the gloomy darkness, before shaking my head and standing up. _What am I talking about, of course she was gonna answer it._ I thought uncharitably, scowling and trying to knuckle the heaviness of sleep from my eyelids. Goddamn Victorians, couldn't a time-traveler get some well-deserved _sleep_ in this place!?

Striding over to the door, I paused before it, taking a half-step to the side and lifting my knife, ready to take any action should the person or persons on the other side try to bust it down and take us by surprise. "Who's there? Identify yourself!"

The tapping stopped. "It is I, Sebastian." the demonic butler's silky voice came from the other side of the wood, sounding ever-so-slightly wearied and impatient…with me, specifically. "Please do forgive this late intrusion, but I have something that I most urgently require the two of you to take care of."

Mey-rin, who had apparently found her glasses in the interim of this conversation, sidled up beside me and before I could stop her was undoing the latch on our door. I groaned to myself and quickly lowered my knife so as to make sure Sebastian didn't think I was threatening him directly, though I kept it ready at my side. One never knew.

The butler, as the door creaked open, barely registered as anything but a humanoid smear of darkness against the lighter shadows of the plaster-walled hallway. He was holding something before him, a pale blob that was striped with odd, thin lines. "Forgive me for disturbing you at this late hour." he repeated, again, and Mey-rin gasped, protectively (I thought) clutching the half-undone collar of her nightgown to her throat.

"M-M-M-M-M-Mister Sebastian!" she squeaked. "Wh-wh-wh-what brings you here at this time of night!" To my mild bemusement, even in the dark I could see her deep blush. "D-d-d-did you come to sneak into my be-"

"There is something I would like the two of you to do first thing in the morning." Sebastian interrupted her gasping train of thought, holding the thing in his hands out towards us. It looked bulky.

"Eh? Oh! Yes. Yes, of course that's it…" Mey-rin mumbled, scratching her cheek sheepishly as I extended my arms carefully, gingerly receiving what felt like the cold metal base of a –cage?

Yes, it was a birdcage, and as I squinted through the gloom, there was a barely-there murmur of feathers and downy fluff as it swiveled its neck to look at me, blinking amber eyes. From the size and heft of the cage, and the ivory color of the bird –what I could perceive in the dark, anyways– I was going to guess it was either some kind of owl –probably a Snowy– or a freakishly mutated pigeon.

"When dawn breaks, please promptly set this bird free." Sebastian said as Mey-rin peeped over my shoulder at the owl (I was going on that assumption, since mutated pigeons, freakish or otherwise, were rare in the 1800s) and it shifted again, it's weight rocking slightly in my grip as I heard the soft scratch of its talons against some kind of perch. "There is a letter tied to its leg."

"A letter, you say? For whom…?" Mey-rin wondered aloud, and Sebastian folded his empty hands behind his back.

"It is not essential for you to know that." he replied at his loftiest and best-mannered, and though I was unable to read the emotion in them through the gloom of the hallway, I could tell his eyes narrowed slightly. "However…it will prove useful in the future without fail." He then looked up and simultaneously fixed the both of us, somehow, with a stern look. "As soon as dawn breaks now. Understood?"

"Y-yes, sir." Mey-rin faltered determinedly, and I nodded, prevented from saluting by the cage I held with both hands.

"Count on it." I agreed, and Sebastian swiftly turned with the air of a man (loose term) with many more things to do and very distant places to be, half-raising a hand in farewell.

"Then I shall take my leave. Please forgive the late intrusion." he said for the last time, starting down the stairs. Mey-rin let out a small noise of disappointment, and to my everlasting horror, Sebastian paused halfway down the steps. I winced and prepared to somehow bodily shove her back inside the room, but I was forestalled by his smooth voice. "Oh yes, one more thing…Miss Thompson is correct. From now on you must refrain from carelessly opening your door at this time of night without confirming the identity of the caller first."

He half-turned and smiled quietly at the both of us, his eyes shadowed. "For you are both young women."

And with that, he turned and clacked down the stars, quickly vanishing around the corner of the stairwell.

 _Creepy fucker._ I thought with a twitching left eye as Mey-rin blinked beside me. "Mister Sebastian…?" she whispered tentatively, and I sighed to myself, shaking my head and nudging her back inside our room with my shoulder.

"C'mon, we should try to snatch what sleep we can get." I told her with a yawn, shoving the door closed with my foot and waiting for her to lock it before turning to the rest of our chamber. Luckily, the nightstand had been righted again, and I placed the cage down on it with a _whoosh_ of relief. Inside, the owl shifted again and clicked its beak, and Mey-rin stooped to peer at it with an "ooh" of excitement.

"I wonder why Mister Sebastian gave us an owl to release, yes I do." she said excitedly, and I collapsed into my warm, soft, fluffy bed with a groan of contentment.

"He said 's got a letter on it, right?" I mumbled into my nice cushy pillow. "Hedwig here's probably gonna deliver it to someone."

"Hedwig?"

_Oops._

"It's, uh, a ref- _er!"_ I cut myself off hastily. _Can't talk about that yet, can't spoiler what hasn't happened already._ "Some, um, guy I know named Potter used to own an owl like this." I mumbled through my cocoon of soft fluffiness, wriggling a little deeper into the blankets.

"Really?" she asked in wonder.

"Oh, yeah." I yawned and punched my feather pillow into a more properly floofy shape. "The kid had weird junk like that happen to him all the time. One might even call his life just…magical."

"How very fine!" Mey-rin exclaimed in admiration, snuggling under her own blankets, and I smirked into the darkness.

_A certain Tom Marvolo Riddle may disagree with you there._

_***Time Skip***_

It seemed like it was hardly more than a few seconds later when I was awoken by the screech of an owl and an increased burst of cold air and the pattering sound of the seemingly-ceaseless raindrops, bringing with it the scent of mud, wet grass, damp stone, and the sharp, frosty edge of the cold March rain itself. I lifted my stone-heavy head and neck from the glorious softness of my pillow, blinking blearily at Mey-rin, who was already dressed for the day, as she closed the window and came down from off her tiptoes. For a few moments, I debated on whether or not I should just slump back down and close my eyes; from my rough estimate, looking at the clock –whose hands pointed the hour as being somewhere around 6.40 in the morning– I had only had about three or four hours of sleep, which had also been interrupted by Sebastian (may he burn in He…er, Heaven?) bringing us the owl.

However, since Mey-rin would in all likelihood do something stupid if I left her alone, I supposed I would have to wake up.

…it's not like I thought she was stupid, it was just –to use the British phrase– she, well, she sort of had the tendency of having her "wits go on holiday". Hell, anyone who had seen what she _did_ when the Noah's Arc Circus came calling at the Phantomhive Manor would know not to underestimate the redheaded maid.

"What manner of freakish sorcery is this, that makes you so damn _awake_ in the mornings?" I finally asked with a slow yawn, rubbing the grit from the corner of my eye as she fiddled with her glasses and smiled sheepishly at me.

"I'm just used to these hours, yes I am." she chirped, and I glared at her.

"Not buying it. Relinquish unto me the source your dark magic, so that I may similarly awaken from my slumber within a state of vextating cheeriness." I grumped, twitching the fingers of my outstretched hand at her in a beckoning motion. My attempted sonorous tones were somewhat downplayed by my bedhead, the bags under my eyes, and my overall air of extreme exhaustion, though Mey-rin was kind enough to affect an aid of being shocked and dismayed…or she was just that gullible. Honestly, it seemed to vary from time to time.

I sighed and swung my legs out from under the covers as she stopped fluttering in mock-distress, trying without success to convince myself that I didn't _really_ need to begin my warm-up and strength exercises before I squeezed into a dress to face the day. The whole "murderer potentially running around the mansion unchecked" was a powerful counterargument against that, and with a weary groan I sat down and laid back, getting into position for my daily sit-ups. Mey-rin chattered happily at me as I went through my routine, by now long-since used to my "indecent" contortions and muscle exercises. She wanted to know all about the party, where I'd gotten my dress, my degree of knowledge to the person who'd gifted me the dress, what I planned to wear today, how much I enjoyed the party last night (aside from the obvious fact of murder), whether or not any of the guys had paid any attention to me, whether or not I was attracted to any of them, and whether or not I wanted to get propositioned to.

Sometimes I really hated the "get-hitched" mindset of the Victorian female society.

Not that I was horribly adverse to talking about boys, but I would be far more comfortable with talking about ones my own age, or at least ones not with more than five or six years of age difference. And, y'know, not Victorians currently under suspicion of murder. That too.

Finished with my exercises, I stepped over to our pitcher of wash water, nestled beside the nightstand we both shared and luckily unbroken and un-tipped-over despite the night's misadventures, quickly dabbing myself clean of sweat with a damp cloth. I raked my brush through my hair with equal swiftness, before cupping a handful of water and washing my face with it thoroughly; I wanted to be awake and alert and ready to face the day, and the shock of cold water helped immensely as I fumbled for a towel, then scrubbed my face dry.

"Hey, uh, y'know how to work a braid?" I asked Mey-rin as I put the rough cotton cloth down, looking at her askance. Using hairpins to do up my hair was kinda precarious, as I'd found last night; loops of hair kept coming loose in a rather socially-embarrassing fashion, which made for a few awkward moments as I tucked them back in or re-did my pins. It was sort of like wearing a wig for a cosplay, except then one at least had the benefit of a wig-cap or the wig itself acting as a sort of barrier to keep the strands or locks of pinned-up hair from falling back down.

Either way, it was annoying, and my hair was long enough at this point that doing it up in a braid would at least confine it in an orderly fashion. I'd pretty much given up trying to find a barber to chop some of it down to size; it was already down past my shoulders, and the only part I bothered to cut was my bangs.

"Oh, sure, that I can, miss!" Mey-rin chirped, stepping behind me as I felt the tug of her hands, and a ticklish sensation began against my skin as she gently drew most of my hair back behind my ears and began to braid it methodically. I somewhat guiltily wished that I could have done it for her, but it was an odd fact of my own dexterity that, while I could whip up a mean braid for someone _else_ , trying to do one on my own hair was always fumblesome and clumsy, _if_ I managed to do it at all.

A small exclamation of pleasure and an increased sense of touch on the back of my neck told me Mey-rin was done in record time, and I reached back as she fortunately understood my meaning and handed me the end of my braid. She stepped away as I bent down and fumbled in the drawer for a hairpin, clipping it onto the end and then carefully coiling the braid around itself at the nape of my neck, pinning it there by skewering the center with an elongated version of a hairpin that Mey-rin told me was called a hatpin.

Hair done, I sighed and acknowledged to myself that maybe a bit of pandering to the Victorian image was necessary, pulling out the red evening gown that Nina had made for me and stepping into it reluctantly. Mey-rin had also long since ceased commenting on my "odd" form of undergarments as (as I might've mentioned before) there was no way in fresh hell that I would be willing to wear a corset and all the other torturously restrictive undergarments of the Victorian age, and thus retained my modern underclothes.

I made a face as Mey-rin, without being asked –and it was so _nice_ to have a _female_ friend for once, someone understood feminine dressage social cues and would actually assist me without being cringingly asked to– stepped behind me and started doing up the buttons on my back, and I reflexively smoothed down the front of my horrifically poofy skirt, each of the wavy pleats acting as if it were filled with air and lace and determined to fluff out as far from my body as possible. The short bell-shaped sleeves, which barely managed to cover my shoulders, frothed with more lace –only red and dainty– at the hems, which were bound tightly to my skin. White lace knitted in –what I could see now– as a pattern of climbing roses and rose vines was laced across my torso above the golden ribbon-rose that sat above my navel, right up until my collarbones, where a strip of the red fabric behind it finally peeked out. I supposed I looked nice, if horribly uncomfortable. The dress fit perfectly and all, but I wasn't used to such a large amount of muffling fabric draped around me. It felt as if someone had stuck my legs in a swimming pool of heavy fabric –I'd never felt so precarious putting on my own shoes and socks before.

"I wish you had at least a flower to tuck in your hair, yes I do." Mey-rin fussed as I was clipping on my earrings, and I offered her a wan smile through our watery reflections in the window.

"This is dolled-up enough for me, thanks." I said, which was true enough, certainly. Dressing up fancy was fun, but not to this degree, not with this much muffling fabric in the way of me beating a hasty exit should something go horribly wrong. Now, I didn't _expect_ that to happen today, but I hadn't expected a lot of nasty surprises before they occurred in my life, and look where that had gotten me now; enough scars to seriously threaten my future job opportunities and fingernails that were still more-than-half raw, stinging nail-beds that had to be kept wrapped up in cotton bandages.

So, recently I had become somewhat averse to confining clothing.

"Uh, what were you planning to do until everyone else wakes up?" I asked as an abrupt thought came to me, half-turning to look at her full-on instead of in the thin, flickering reflection. "'Cause, y'know, we really shouldn't be wandering around the mansion by ourselves after what happened."

Mey-rin gasped with almost a theatrical level of fear, holding a hand to her mouth. "D-d-d-do you think the killer will come for us next, Miss Arya?!" she squealed, and I sweatdropped in a way that was hopefully subtle enough not for her to notice.

_I was more gunning for the idea of us always having an alibi, but if that's how her brain is going…_

"Uh, maybe. But anyway, what were you planning on passing the time with?"

She frowned and shuffled a little bit, looking nervous. "Don't much fancy wandering the manor now…" she mumbled, looking down at her shoes, then suddenly brightened, leading me to believe that her fear of murderers was more fleeting than plausible. "Ooh, I've got an idea, yes I have! Let's tell ghost stories!"

I valiantly resisted the urge to sweatdrop again. "We're trapped in an old mansion…by a thunderstorm…with a killer…and you want to tell _ghost stories?"_ I asked her incredulously, and she beamed, grabbing and squeezing my hands excitedly as she held our conjoined fingers close to her chest.

"Oh, don't you see! That's why it's so exciting! The setting is perfect, yes it is!" she chirped ecstatically, eyes sparkling even behind her thick glasses. I huffed and rolled my eyes, but obeyed her tugging as we both sat down on her bed and she spread her fingers wide with a dramatic flourish.

"Alright, miss! This story contains the tale of 50 Berkeley Square, the most haunted house in London…"

_***Time Skip***_

As the hours slowly ticked by, the bit of trivia that I had always forgotten –Mey-rin's extreme love of the occult and supernatural– was practically burned into my skull as she excitedly retold ghost story after ghost story, each one more lurid and haunting than the last. Her obvious fascination with the paranormal (I remembered that irony now) was rather amusing, considering her complete naive obliviousness to Sebastian's true nature.

"…slowly, the ghost floated closer, looming above the terrified kitchen-boy!" Mey-rin was murmuring spookily, waggling her outstretched fingers at me in a haunting manner. "Her hair and clothes spreading like floating cobwebs in the dim light of the entrance hall, and with a chill, he heard the dreaded _drip-drip-drip_ of blood spattering on the freshly-washed tiles. Afraid to look, yet unable to bear it, slowly, he uncurled himself, only to see –horror!" She faux-lunged as I managed not to jump too much. "This specter was a horror untold, for she had no eyes! Fresh gouts of blood ran down her cheeks like tears in mourning for all the lives she had taken, and as if fearing the touch of his gaze she howled in outrage, spreading wide her taloned, scabberous hands, and lunged upon-"

**Bang! Bang! Bang!**

To my somewhat self-conscious shame, Mey-rin and I both reflectively squealed and clutched each other at the exact same time as there was a sudden barrage of knocks upon our door –not the refined, considerate tapping that Sebastian had used earlier in the night, but a frantic banging like someone was pounding on our door with their fists. (In my own defense, I'd been listening to rather spooky ghost stories for almost four hours. A startled reaction was warranted.)

We both recovered at roughly the same time, but before we could respond –and to my surprise– I heard Bardroy call loudly through the wood. "You two! Both of you! Are you alright in there!?"

"Uh…" I looked at Mey-rin, and she looked at me, and behind those thick opaque glasses I could detect more than a hint of emerging worry. "Startled, but fine." I called, out, raising my voice so that he could hear me through the door. "What's the big idea with trying to bust down our door with you fists, huh?"

There was barely a rattle before he slammed the door open wide, ignoring Mey-rin's scandalized squeal of "Bardroy!" as I reflexively jerked off the bed, half-raising my fists, in response to the sudden loud noise and aggressive movement.

"We need to gather everyone together! There's-!" He abruptly choked to a halt, and I saw with alarm that his eyes were watery. "There's been another murder in Lord Siemen's room." he managed after a moment, then whirled out the door as the two of us were left staring after the space he'd previously occupied. Following his momentum, the door eased vaguely in the direction of the frame with a gentle squeak, but barely managed to make it more than a few inches before stilling.

_Uh-oh._

It took me less than twenty or so seconds to puzzle out who was the newest stiff: Bardroy hadn't met any of the party guests before, ergo it must have been one of the manor's servants who bit the dust, since he was visibly grieved and upset. As Mey-rin and I were, obviously, just fine and dandy, Ciel couldn't die (being the main character), and I remembered Finny and Bardroy participating in later arcs, the only other possible victim was our dearest, _darlingest_ Bassy.

To be brutally frank, I wasn't overly distressed. Even if he actually was dead (which he wasn't), I still probably wouldn't have much cared. As I had discovered in the past few months, despite how much pretty much everyone in the fandom –myself included– squeed and cooed over how awesome and hot Sebastian was, in _actual_ real life he was…well, there really wasn't any polite way to put it. He was a demon; a suave, coldly amused, rigidly disdainful, mocking, patronizing, sadistic, _arrogant motherfucker_ whom, if the manor burned down right this very minute with every single one of us inside, would probably be found sitting on a fence calmly watching us scream and burn as he chuckled absently to himself. Sebastian literally could not give less of a shit about any single one of us, Ciel included, except that he had to pretend to try and keep Ciel happy in order to twitch his strings and make his soul more tasty.

So yeah. I didn't particularly grieve over the fact that he was faux-dead.

 _Except I'm gonna have to fake it when we all see his corpse, or else people'll suspect I was the one that kacked him…fuuuuuuuck, I hate acting, I hate having to fake emotions, fuck, it never ends well for me. Uh, well, I guess that's because the only times I've ever had to fake feeling something was when I was dealing with immortal psychopaths. Stupid 2ps. Gah._ I thought absently as Mey-rin and I scuttled out the door, heading for the further reaches of the guest wing of the manor. Despite the "early" hour of a mere 9.00 in the morning –actually closer to ten, since it was about 9.50 when we ran out of our room– most of the others were already awake and putting themselves together to face the day, and it hardly took more than two or three rapid knocks on the door before someone opened it and we could pass the information along. Luckily for the sake of alibis, specifically mine and Mey-rin's, all the doors were more or less on the same hallway and we remained in sight of each other as we scampered along the echoing wooden floors, gathering the other guests and ushering them towards the "murder room" as I spotted Finny and Bardroy doing the same.

The other guests murmured to each other, but I only shrugged when anyone caught my eye in a questioning fashion. After all, I was _technically_ as clueless as they all were, and all that.

Faint hints of a certain scent drifted in the air as we hurried towards the familiar door, growing stronger, and my stomach twisted at the flat iron taste that caught in the back of my mouth as I inhaled. I knew that scent, and I knew it well. The familiar tingling frisson of adrenaline began humming along my nerves, my body tensing up and preparing for fight-or-flight, and I practiced slow, deep, even breathes, trying to calm myself down. There was _absolutely nothing_ to worry about. The danger was past at this point of the plot, and there was nothing that I, personally, had to deal with. No strawberry-blonde British psychopaths with sharp knives and even sharper grins that had made the room awash with blood.

Because the smell, of course, was blood.

A series of gasps and short yelps and screams racketed through the small group as Bardroy threw open the door, revealing the room of von Siemens with a body within it for the second time in as many days. Sebastian lay recumbent on the ground, clad in his normally impeccable butler uniform of darkest black, a poker or some other kind of long iron fireplace fixture buried in his chest, amidst a feathering puddle of deep red blood, soaking into the expressive wool carpet and perfuming the room with its acrid stench, mingling and strengthening the cloying tang left over from von Siemens' own murder the night before…or rather, earlier this morning. (Eugh. When this was all over, I was taking a week off just to sleep in.)

Hypnotized by the tragedy and drawn by, perhaps, macabre curiosity, we all crept into the room once again, and I made an effort to school my features into any combination of shock, dismay, grief, or horror that might placate any of the other guests –though what I really wanted to do, in the spirit of immature mockery, was grind my heel into Sebastian's upturned, frozen face, eyes vacant and mouth agape. Not that, y'know, I'd actually have the guts to do such a thing even if there _was_ nobody else present, since Sebastian was very much _not_ dead and, if I had, he would've probably come back for me later and broken one or both of my legs as payback.

…but the thought was still there.

Mey-rin and Finny, of course, immediately burst into sobbing tears, but the others seemed too emotionally distant, shocked, and horrified –or, in Bardroy's case, too used to soldiering on through grief– to weep.

"What on earth is going on!?" Grimsby hissed through clenched teeth as, beside him, Irene lifted a trembling hand to her mouth.

"This is terrible…" she quavered, and I frowned, tilting my head from where I, reflexively, had stuck around by the doorway. Call me jumpy, but I felt safer with my back to a wall and right next to an exit, especially after a murder incident. (Even if the victim wasn't dead.)

The amount of blood that had pooled under Sebastian though…maybe I was antsy, but it just seemed to be _too much_. One single stab wound to the chest, even if it _was_ the heart, surely shouldn't produce _this_ much blood…right…?

Then again, other than the basics picked up from casual watching of crime shows and a few tidbits here and there from novels, I didn't know jack shit about forensics.

_Note to self, remedy that later._

"I never imagined this would happen…" Earl Grey commented softly to himself, as Lau curiously held his curled fist to his mouth and Woodley, shaken and pale, merely stared down at Sebastian's corpse as if he couldn't believe his own eyes.

I tried to arrange my features into something more poignantly distressed as I heard what _sounded_ like bare footsteps slapping rapidly across the wooden floors, traveling quickly down the hallways towards this room. There was a louder, more staccato click of soled feet, brisk and efficient, as a counterpoint to the louder sounds of two strides, one long, one short. No prizes as to guess who these three newcomers were.

 _"H-how_ should we break the news-!?" Mey-rin hiccuped as tears ran over her fingers, her hands clasped to her face, her loud sobbing a counterpoint to Finny's harsher gasps. "-t-to the young master?!"

"Ah!" Bardroy gasped as the sounds of the three pairs of footsteps came to a halt behind me and I turned, seeing Ciel standing within the doorway –still in his nightshirt– and Arthur Conan Doyle standing behind him, which explained the two sets of bare footsteps. "Young master!"

There was instant silence in the room, as the young earl's visible eye widened sharply.

"Se…bas…tian…?" Ciel breathed in a hoarse, shocked whisper, a mere thread of sound, and took one wobbling step into the room, and then another, and another.

"No, stop!" Mey-rin cried, lunging to wrap her arms protectively around the small earl and hold him back. "Young master, you must not enter, not at all!"

"Let me go!" he cried, writhing and squirming indignantly in her grip as Finny rushed forward to aid her in holding him back.

"No, young master!" he cried, and Ciel seethed, visibly clenching his teeth.

"Stay back!" he snarled, slapping both of them away as I winced just barely. "Don't you _dare_ order your master around!"

Mey-rin cringed back with a choked sort of sob, her forehead as red as Finny's nose where Ciel's (non-ringed) hand had struck. I would've whistled under my breath, impressed (had it not been extremely inappropriate to the situation) at the tiny thirteen-year-old's strength, to be able to whack two older and bigger people away with one blow of his hand.

Maybe it was an adrenaline thing.

Ciel then hissed through his teeth, taking slow, deliberate steps towards where Sebastian lay sprawled on the expensive plush-wool carpeting. He didn't stop until his left foot landed in one of the outspread gouts of blood with a soft _splat_ , his pupil narrowed in a way that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It was sharp and feral and dangerous in the "vexed executive" way that more suited someone twice Ciel's age with pointy horns, slicked-back hair, and a forked tail to boot.

"Sebastian, how much longer are you going to keep up this childish prank?" he asked in a low, cold voice. "Once again, I can't imagine the floor makes for comfortable slumber. Just how much longer do you intend to feign sleep, hm?"

Sebastian, doing a stunning impersonation of a blood-spattered cadaver, obviously did not respond. Bardroy shifted slightly from over on the right by the couch, where he and Earl Grey and Lau and Ran-Mao were standing, along with Woodley.

"Young master." he muttered tersely, but Ciel ignored him, kicking his unbloodied foot against Sebastian's chest just beneath the wound with a solid, wet-sounding thud.

"Can you not hear me, Sebastian?" he asked dangerously, his ice-blue eye flaring wide. "I'm telling you to get up." When he still did not get a respond, Ciel gritted his teeth and wrapped his tiny hand around the handle of the poker buried in Sebastian's chest and forcibly ripped it out with a sick, cloying _squilsh_ of displaced tissue as a brief spray of blood fountained out. "Why, you-!"

"My lord!" Arthur Conan Doyle protested sharply as the corner of my eye gave a spasmodic twitch, seeing the integrity of the forensic evidence at a crime scene (even if it didn't matter for shit in _this_ particular case) being desecrated so enormously.

Ciel flung the metal implement aside violently and grabbed Sebastian by his lapels, ignoring all else, as he did his level best to shake the butler in rage. Give Ciel's rather…miniature-esque…state of being, the effect even when he was in the midst of an adrenaline-charged fury was sort of like an overenthusiastic puppy trying to lift and shake a ragdoll six or seven times its size, but _boy_ the intent was there.

"Sebastian! You get up right now, you hear me!? I command you!"

As much as Ciel was able to lift him up, Sebastian's corpse flopped limply without response, and I thought I heard a choked sob from Mey-rin as Ciel reared back with a choked cry of rage. Even I winced, though, at the harsh _snap_ of skin-against-skin, combined with a harsh but muted dull _clink_ of metal against skin-covered bone, as Ciel reared up and used every combined ounce of strength, leverage, and momentum to smack Sebastian full-on across the jaw _with_ his beringed hand. _"Did you fail to hear my command!?"_ he shouted, doing it again, and again, and again.

"WHO IN THE NAME OF HELL GAVE YOU PERMISSION TO DIE?! I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS, SEBASTIAN! OPEN YOUR DAMN-"

Bardroy lunged forward and caught Ciel's bloodied hand as he swung back for another full-contact strike. "Young master." he croaked, putting his other hand on Ciel's shoulder as the stunned earl allowed Bardroy to guide him like a lamb, numbly looking up. "Please, stop. We can't take any more of this. He…" The blonde cook bit down on the unlit cigarette in his mouth as Ciel stared blankly up at him, slowly letting the unresisting boy's hand go as it fell limply back to his side. "…he's already dead."

Ciel looked, dumbfounded, down at the black-clad corpse splattered in blood, and slowly reached out for Sebastian's body again, his ichor-spattered fingers trembling. "This…must be some kind of joke, right?" he whispered brokenly as Mey-rin and Finny buried their faces in each other's shoulders, starting to sob again, and Tanaka solemnly looked at the ground. "Are you…really dead? Sebastian?"

His hand brushed almost reverently across one of the butler's closed eyes, pushing some of the silky black blood-clotted hair away from his brow. "You, my butler…" Ciel hunched over with a little harsh gasp. "You…and you alone, who…who promised you would stay at my side until the very end-!"

The earl's voice broke into an inaudible whimper of sound as his chin nearly touched Sebastian's shoulder, so curled-up was he. There was a moment of respectful silence, then Earl Grey sighed and folded his arms. "The corpse will rot if we leave it here, so it would be a good idea to move it quickly." he said flatly, and Bardroy twitched a little with a small noise, as though offended by his insensitivity.

However, being American had not stripped him of his sense of self-preservation, so Bardroy sighed and looked to the side. "…yeah." he agreed resignedly.

"Come on, young master…" Mey-rin said gently, putting her hands beneath Ciel's arms and pulling him back into a kneeling position, preparing to lift him upright.

Ciel wasn't having it though. "No! Let me go!" he howled, thrashing in place as she switched grips, binding one arm on his chest beneath his own arms and one over them, holding the earl very effectively indeed as she continued to pull him back. "Don't leave me behind, Sebastian!"

"Young master!" Mey-rin cried plaintively as she hauled him back, Ciel squirming for every gained inch.

"Sebastian! I command you. I command you!" he cried, lunging forward and snatching some kind of pin with a tiny metal chain on it from Sebastian's lapel. "I COMMAND YOU!"

"Hn?" Lau suddenly hummed to himself from closer to me, putting a sleeve to his mouth as though to hide a playful smile. He lowered it as Doyle looked at him with similar surprise, Lau's mouth was indeed curled in a very cruel, catlike smirk as he viewed Mey-rin pulling Ciel to his feet and soothing him as best she could. "Committing this last murder would have been impossible for the confined earl, hmm?"

Doyle jolted.

"This is all turning out to be very amusing indeed." Lau lilted happily, and I ran a hand through as much of my hair as I could with it in a wound-up braid, blowing out an underwhelmed breath that I hoped looked intimidated and possibly frightened.

"What on earth is going on in this manor!?" Grimsby shouted as he clutched the trembling Irene to himself. "Two people have been murdered in the space of one night!"

Irene clutched her curled fist to her mouth, staring white-faced at the bloodied poker. "A-and he was killed in such a…" she whimpered as Doyle knelt down to take a look at the corpse.

"Tell me about it." Bardroy muttered, combing a hair through his sweaty bangs from where he stood above Doyle and the corpse. "Runnin' him through with a fireplace poker…was just too much, man."

Arthur Conan Doyle let out a stifled exclamation as he gently lifted up Sebastian's skull.

"There are signs of trauma to the head." he murmured in realization. "He may have been struck from behind while stoking the fire."

"And 'cos that didn't do him in, they finished him off with another blow to the chest, huh?" Bardroy guesstimated, and Earl Grey tilted his head.

"Or maybe they didn't wait to see if he was dead and instead attacked twice in quick succession…" he suggested, hooding his eyes. "Rather than a single attack, two attacks would have been sure to kill him."

"…how strange." Doyle murmured as he sat back on his heels, putting a hand to his chin.

"Eh?" Earl Grey asked, clearly somewhat chuffed at any potential opposition to his theory.

"If he did not die from the blow to the _back_ of his head…why did the murderer go to the trouble of stabbing him from the front?" Doyle asked musingly, lowering his hand, and Bardroy blinked as my brain abruptly fuzzed out.

_Crap, did that mean that it's a double-down? Crap crap crap crap, stupid plot line, why didn't I write that down when I had the chance?!_

"Yeah, normally you'd attack from the same direction if you're attacking twice." the blonde cook mused, stroking his chin.

"Then maybe…there are multiple perpetuators." Doyle said as he looked up at the rest of us, which was met (predictably), by gasps from just about everyone in the room. He straightened, rubbing his chin contemplatively. "For example, one spoke to him from the front to catch his attention, while the second snuck up from behind and bludgeoned him in the head. Then the one in front delivered the finishing blow without pause."

"In any case, it is a fact that I sense not a shred of mercy or hesitation." Lau chimed in, putting a hand to his chest as Ran-Mao nodded woodenly from her place beside him. "The culprit or culprits managed to kill _that_ butler, so they must be very-"

"Please just stop now!" Finny blurted, clutching Ciel –now with someone's jacket draped around his shoulders– to his chest protectively. "How could you talk like that when the young master's right here! Please consider the young master's feelings!"

"Finny!" Mey-rin squawked, then turned and bowed nervously to the rest of the assembly. "P-please excuse our rudeness, please do!"

"…well. He does have a point~!" Earl Grey drawled, scratching the back of his head. "We can stand around the corpse bandying theories about all we like, but it won't get us anywhere. So let's first carry this to the cellar. The discussion of the murderer's identity and the like can be continued afterward, perhaps over a meal or something."

"How can you take this so leisurely-!" Woodley choked, clearly appalled by Grey's casual manner. I wasn't really –working as a high-ranking officer for the Queen in _this_ world meant that he probably saw corpses once a week, if not more.

"You're right. No good will come of rushing things." Lau agreed happily, and Earl Grey spun around, sauntering calmly out the door with his hands behind his head.

"That's that, then! We'll leave you servants to handle the disposal of _that thing_." He glanced over his shoulder, moving one hand to leave his gaze unhindered. "Oh, and have breakfast ready for us as well, hm?" He then yawned and spun back around. "I'm heading to the dining room first! I'm starving."

"We're going too." Grimsby said, pulling Irene along with him as she let out a forlorn noise, looking at Ciel in concern. I shrugged and decided I needed the food and therefore energy and I trotted after the other guests instead of hanging around with the servants, who doubtless we busy emoting and did not need me standing around forcing a not-smile and pretending that I was equally grieved, because I _wasn't_ , and that was something other people could sense, even when they were (forgive me) as dense as that trio often was.

And right now, I really did not need to be under suspicion of murder.

_***Time Skip***_

Breakfast –though by this time, it was more like lunch– was gourmet-grade fish and chips with mushy peas and, as a sort of ironic nod to the concept _of_ breakfast, some hardboiled eggs. There was also what was revealed, as I poked at it with my fork, some kind of quiche made of vegetables. A flash and rumble of lightning forked outside the window when we were all settled, and I felt a shiver ride down my spine –because no matter how many fires were lit, they didn't do a very good job of keeping a place as big as this warm in the early morning, and it had been steadily raining ice-cold water for several days now. I was cold, and of course the oppressive atmosphere of murder and suspicion wasn't exactly helping.

Ciel quietly unfolded his napkin, placing it in his lap, as Tanaka set his plate down in front of him. "It's a great help that he took care of the meals in advance." he commented, breaking the brittle silence, before all sound died off once again. No one seemed overly inclined to make conversation, the pall of death hanging over us all and pressing our spirits down with its leaden weight.

Earl Grey, however, seemed to have no such inhibitions. "Smells yummy! Let's eat!" he chirped happily as Tanaka laid his own plate, holding up his knife and fork in anticipation. "I didn't eat this morning, so I'm famished!"

With that prompting, everyone finally (reluctantly) dug in, and I could scarf down my own meal without seeming like an American glutton. It was warmed, which was nice, so I shook off some of the morning chill as I eagerly gobbled down the fish and toasted potato wedges, and even managed to slice up and choke down the hardboiled eggs –despite the fact that I normally really wasn't a fan. I was fine with the flavor and all –scrambled eggs were one of my favorite breakfast foods– but when they were hardboiled they were just so –so _dry-textured!_

I finally met my match, though, in the vegetable quiche –which turned out to be spinach. I might be a bit of an explorer now when it came to flavors and foods (blame that on all the traveling to exotic locals I'd been doing in the past eight months) and I might be willing to take certain dishes on faith, but no self-respecting member of the youth population in any era would ever _willingly_ chow down on spinach in _any_ form. Luckily, I was mostly already full, so I could pull apart the slice on my plate in a way that made it seem as if I were trying. I drank some of the water too, glad that for once there was a non-alcoholic beverage for me to imbibe.

Certain other members of the party were less voracious. "What's wrong, Irene? You've barely touched your plate!" Grimsby commented, leaning over to her as she pressed her still-folded napkin to her mouth.

"I'm sorry." she murmured, closing her eyes faintly. "I don't have much of an appetite…"

Earl Grey paused in the act of stuffing a fork into his mouth, glancing in their direction as he lifted up his empty plate to give to Tanaka and pulled the fork out. "Hey, if that's gonna go to waste, can I help myself to it?" he asked, twirling the fork rapidly around his finger in a disturbing display of dexterity.

"Yes, here you-" Irene began, lifting up her plate, but he cut her off as he spun the fork to a halt.

"No!" He pointed with the silver utensil. "Not yours…but the one _next_ to you."

"Eh?" she blinked, looking to the side, where there was an empty chair and a full, untouched, plate. "Oh…you are right. There is an extra place here. Did the chef prepare too many?"

Ciel dismissed the notion immediately. "The one who prepared breakfast was Sebastian. He would never get the number of place settings wrong."

"Eh? Then whose is it?" Doyle asked in surprise, having cottoned on and was now looking curiously around the table. "Everyone is present and –oh! Mister Phelps is missing."

"You're right." Grimsby said in surprise, laying down his utensils. "I failed to notice because he doesn't have much of a presence. Ah ha ha!"

"Now that you mention it, I haven't seen him all morning. It seems he's really sleeping in!" Woodley laughed, and Lau contributed with a polite chuckle.

Doyle, however, remained silent, then suddenly got to his feet with a clatter. "If I may!" he announced loudly, drawing everyone's attention and silencing what little conversation there was. "What do you say…we go look in the Earl's bedroom?"

That got a round of murmurs started, before Ciel smoothly removed his napkin and got to his feet. "I'll show you the way." he commented leisurely, and, of course, the entire group got up to follow after. We all scented something in the air now, something that had nothing to do with the scent of rain and candle wax and the admittedly yummy breakfast now lying neglected and steaming on the sideboard. The game was afoot, to quote a certain clever individual, and I decided to abandon Victorian propriety (again) as everyone hurried after the retreating Doyle, with Ciel and Finny close behind, hiking my floofy skirt all the way up to my calves _(gasp_ , how scandalous!) and settling into an equally quick jog to keep up.

"Turn right up there!" Ciel called ahead to Doyle as we scampered through some of the more cushy parts of the mansion, which I hadn't seen thus far, heading for a pair of closed double-doors with some reedy scrollwork delicately painted a toss the top. Doyle barely slowed to a stop as he fetched up against them, hammering his fist loudly against the expensive wood.

"Mister Phelps! Mister Phelps, please respond if you're there!"

Silence.

Doyle immediately reached down as the rest of us caught up, rattling the handle of the door with a frantic grunt as it clicked and refused to catch. "Kuh! The lock, it's-" He whirled around and bestowed a panicked look upon Ciel. "My lord! Where is the key?!"

Ciel shook his head quietly. "I don't know." he said solemnly.

"Eh!?"

"Sebastian is the keeper to the key of my room, and only he knows where it is stored." the young earl said flatly. "Now that he's dead, even I couldn't tell you where to find it."

Finny pushed in front of Ciel heroically. "Please stand back, young master! I'll-"

_"Move."_

The young blonde gardener lunged down to tackle Ciel instead as Doyle ducked onto all fours with a cry, several sharp flashes whizzing through the air as Earl Grey, plate in one hand and a fork sticking out of his mouth, impatiently slashed the door into fragments. "Let's take care of this quick okay?" he said around the expensive cutlery as Finny clutched Ciel hard enough to strangle him and Doyle shook on the ground, the doors clattering down in pieces behind them. Beside me, Grimsby looked nonplussed at the abrupt show of martial dexterity, and Lau clapped softly in appreciation as the dust billowed out around us, settling slowly on the wood flooring. "I haven't had my dessert yet."

Arthur Conan Doyle quickly got to his feet again as Ciel managed to pry Finny off of himself. We rushed through the doors…into a quaint sitting room with two huge bookshelves resting up against the outside walls. _Ciel has his own **apartment** within his own mansion?_ I thought with absent, half-disgusted awe, as Doyle banged open another set of doors that led into what I barely glimpsed as a bedroom. "Mister Phelps!" he cried as slammed into the room, jolting a little, as though he'd misstepped, as I heard a soft, dull thud.

Slowly, we all looked down, me leaning up on my tiptoes as I peeked over the future author's shoulder. Sue me, I was curious.

Aaaaand _viola_ , there was yet another corpse. Patrick Phelps was sprawled facedown on the soft carpet of Ciel's bedroom, still in his nightshirt, outflung hands futilely clutched in the heavy fabric, as though with his last dying breathes he had struggled to claw his way to safety or aid. His head was tilted to the side, spittle pooled underneath his gaping mouth, and there was a pronounced expression of terror on his pale, wan face.

"Mister Phelps!" Doyle cried as those behind me, without the blessing of height (hehe) or behind too many other bodies to see, all gasped in horror as their most dreadful of expectations –well, perhaps except for those who thought to see a bloodbath– was fulfilled. The only one of us that had any medical training whatsoever lunged to his knees beside the corpse, and I slid out of the way as Ciel remained frozen in the doorway and the other guests jostled forward, unable to bear the uncertainty. Even Earl Grey seemed stunned for once, blinking those eerie opaque eyes of his slowly and without words as his thin, silvery eyebrows furrowed uncertainly.

"How…?" I heard Ciel whisper softly, incredulously, and _that_ put the hair –well, the hair that wasn't braided– up on the back of my neck. Right now, during the Murder Arc, Ciel was playing king, crown, and castle with us –everything was dancing within the palm of his, and by extension Sebastian's, hand, and not only was he twitching the strings, he was also playing the tunes. Ergo, anything that took _him_ by surprise or was a jarring note in his play was perforce _Very Bad News_.

Doyle gently ran his hands over the corpse. I reflexively winced at the idea of the corruption to the bacterial forensics that doing so without gloves would cause, then equally suddenly remembered that nobody in this day and age hardly even took thought to the idea of the very existence of bacteria and germs, never mind the concept of using microscopic evidence to convict someone of a crime.

_It still gives me the twitchies._

Doyle shook his head solemnly as he sat up a little. "Quite some time has passed since rigor mortis has set in." he reported to the general audience.

"Are we all having a bad dream or something…?" Grimsby whispered hoarsely as Irene gulped behind him, the two theater-dwellers looking pale.

Doyle began patting down the corpse and slightly shifting his clothing –within the parameters of modesty given with four ladies present, of course. "There is no external trauma as in the previous two…" he began, then gasped as he pulled down the neck of Phelps's nightshirt. "He has what appears to be puncture wounds on the neck!"

"Perhaps he was injected with poison from a needle or the like." Earl Grey put forth, still seemingly slightly off-put by this turn of events, but clearly rapidly regaining his equilibrium.

"A needle?" Ciel asked, his remaining eye shrouding slightly. Something seemed about to occur to him, but the solemn atmosphere was shattered as there was a creak and a loud rustle of clothing from yet another adjoining chamber.

"Oh, I say~! Lord Earl lives in a most wonderful room." Lau chirped as he impudently rummaged through Ciel's wardrobe and Ran-Mao crouched on the ground nearby, quietly and with much curiosity jamming a feathered top hat onto her head. Already, though they had barely been in there for more than a few seconds, much of his clothing was strewn about on the ground in untidy heaps.

"Don't rummage around someone else's quarters as you please!" Ciel barked furiously, a tick mark throbbing on his head. Both Lau and Ran-Mao ignored him.

"Ah-ha!" Lau exclaimed triumphantly, flapping a cheongsam that for all the world looked Ciel's size, strewn with sequins and a dark peony print. Ran-Mao peered at it at well, now wearing the flat, flower-bedecked straw hat that Ciel had worn when he'd crossdressed at the Viscount of Druitt's party. "You've held onto the dress I gave you! Have you worn it?"

"I most certainly have not!" Ciel snapped, a flush of indignation crossing his cheeks. "Listen when I'm talking to you!"

He groaned when Lau seemed inclined to do no such thing, continuing to rummage. I immediately tried to block out any kind of mental image related to that whatsoever, no matter how amusing the concept of Victorian-gentleman Ciel in a thigh-high Chinese dress might be. Some things were just meant to remain unknown.

"They could also be said to resemble the tooth marks of some beast or another…" Doyle was musing, drawing my attention back to the corpse in the room, and Irene frowned, cocking her head with a shiver.

"Bite marks on the neck…brings to mind _Carmilla_ , doesn't it?" she asked, and Ciel turned away with Lau and Ran-Mao a sigh of disgust.

"By that, are you referring to Le Franu's vampiric _Carmilla?"_ he asked with a bit more interest, and she nodded, a tentative smile breaking her worried face.

"Yes. Are you familiar with it?"

I frowned and tilted my chin, looking (at a distance) at the two reddened little punctures that marked Phelps's neck, ignoring the others as they began loudly debating that theory.

"So you're saying he was killed by a vampire!? Preposterous!"

"Such occult and unscientific occurrences have no place in the nineteenth century!"

_Bite marks…needle-like…potentially killed by poison…_

"A snake!" I exclaimed as the penny suddenly dropped, then winced as everyone within earshot turned to me. I hadn't really meant to say that aloud…

_Oops._

"How do you mean?" Irene asked, and I swallowed, making a tentative little chomping, snapping motion with my hand.

"Well, you know…if a poisonous snake of some kind got into the room somehow and Phelps pissed it off…"

"Don't be ridiculous." Grimsby scoffed. "The only venomous species in all of England is the adder, and how on earth would one get all the way up here –in the middle of a storm, no less!"

I nodded ruefully. _Okay, fair point._ I acknowledged to myself grudgingly, though –with the presumed added presence of Snake on the property– a reptile's natural inclination would mean absolutely nothing in the face of his will/control. _That_ was why it'd taken Ciel by surprise –this was Snake's attempt at assassinating Ciel due to his presumed influence in making the Noah's Arc Circus disappear and therefore, of course, it was a complete surprise towards the earl. Snake, obviously, had no inside knowledge of Ciel's plans and the activities that had occurred last…earlier today, so therefor it was Phelps who fell to the pointy fangs of his adversary instead of the earl.

"This is no time for a woman's flights of fancy!" Woodley snorted in agreement, making my eyes narrow slightly as my hand, tucked under one arm, involuntarily curled into a fist, my smug feeling at figuring out (or rather, remembering) the whole plot dissolving into sour irritation. Hitting a peer, especially when the suspicion of murder had not concretely rested on any one person, was in all likelihood a very bad idea.

_What I wouldn't give to roundhouse deck him right in the face, though._

I scoffed audibly, which was really the most defense I could go for right now without seeming highly suspicious, and looked at Doyle for support. We'd had a nice chat earlier, and besides, he'd written a story (though not yet) about a poisonous snake being the murder weapon.

Only to find that Doyle had scarpered (as the Brits would say) and was now kneeling beside Ciel's nightstand, where the smashed remains of a lamp and what looked like a clock lay facedown on the rug. "2.38 AM." he announced loudly, finally drawing the attention back away from me, as he picked up the clock and gently turned it over. A gilded impression of vines and oak leaves circled the shattered glass face, and the needlelike hands were frozen in place over several of the Roman numerals.

"That would be the clock I kept at my bedside." Ciel stated disingenuously, and Doyle slowly straightened, kneeling upright before the nightstand.

"He likely dropped it amidst his throes of agony…it's broken." the doctor said slowly, tapping his thumb gently against the side.

"Which would mean that Mister Phelps died around 2.38?" Ciel posed delicately as Doyle replaced the clock with great care.

"Yes."

"I say!" Lau piped up merrily from Ciel's dressing room, where he and Ran-Mao (who was now adjusting something that looked roughly similar to a pirate's hat) had been wreaking havoc throughout the duration of our conversation. "Instead of standing here holding court, why don't we go sit down and think the situation through? Over a nice cup of tea, perhaps?"

"Quite right." Ciel agreed with a sigh. "Tanaka, show our guests to the drawing room."

"Very good, sir."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 4.41 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 23rd, 2019, USA Central Time


	32. That Butler, Coda (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually have the exact same box Arya talks about, although I didn't get it at Covent Garden…I think. It was on my trip with People to People back in the summer I transitioned from middle school to high school, and needless to say, my memory of the trip is fuzzy. I do remember I got it on the trip, but I vaguely remember that I might've gotten it at another place, potentially Ireland. Either way, it's from the British Isles. I remember definitely seeing another neat box made out of rounds (cross-section slices) of this blueish wood all inlaid perfectly together that was so pretty~…but I didn't get it cause the guy didn't accept debit cards. I'm still looking for it too! Pretty much every time I've come back to Britain, I've gone to Convent Garden Market to check if the vendor was back, but so far no dice.

_Arya's POV:_

When we retired to the aforementioned drawing room in good order, I'd beamed in satisfaction when I had seen several three-tiered tea trays laid out for our benefit. My energy had to come from somewhere after all, and since I'd gotten less than five hours of sleep last…okay, it was last night, I needed to put some fuel in my machine before I started running on nothing but fumes –which was especially bad since, you know, I currently needed all my wits as sharp and pointy as Ciel's smile or Sebastian's razor-sharp deadly gaze.

_Murder waits for no man…or woman, ya fucking sexists._

"Well, now that I've had my dessert, let's sort things out." Earl Grey said as he slowly chewed to a halt, and I came back to myself, squirming a little awkwardly from where I sat on the slippery horsehair couch, right next to Ran-Mao. To be fair, she didn't seem to be taking notice of me at all, instead busy mechanically feeding Lau pieces of the cake, fork by steady fork. But, aside from the fact that I had almost witnessed her brutally bludgeon two people to death, there was just something about her doll-like demeanor that just…creeped me out so damn bad. I was regretting the chance of fate that left the only empty spot beside her as, on a matching armchair kitty-corner to us, Earl Grey set his own fork down on the dainty china plate before him. "First, Lord Siemens. He died around 1.10 AM today. Only Earl Phantomhive has no alibi. And then, the butler…we do not know his time of death. Next was Phelps, and he died around 2.38 AM today…okay so far?"

"No." Doyle replied assiduously from where he sat on the other side of Lau and Ran-Mao. "The butler's corpse was discovered before Phelps's, but we do not know which of the two was first to be murdered."

"Oh! Right." Earl Grey agreed placidly, which ticked something off in the back of my head.

_If Sebastian didn't really die…is his body going to go through rigor mortis? Is he actually going to start decomposing, and then just, like…reverse the process when he "comes back"?_

"Going by the state of the corpses, a few hours had elapsed from the time the two were killed. Thus, it holds true that both I and the Earl have an alibi, as we were chained together until morning." Doyle was saying as he scribbled in his thin leather-bound notebook with a fountain pen, pulling me rudely back into the present. Earl Grey huffed and tucked his arms behind his head, dramatically collapsing back against the high end of his private armchair by way of response.

"The professor and I were shackled and got into bed around 2.00 AM. Sebastian mentioned that he had already taken Mister Phelps through to my bedroom." Ciel chipped in from the armchair opposite Earl Grey, sitting on Doyle's left just as Earl Grey sat on my right. "And then Mister Phelps was murdered around 2.38 AM, hm…"

"Well, who saw Master Butler last?" Lau asked curiously, and Doyle hung his head a little, looking hangdog.

"The two of us, most likely, but…the room was dark and the clock far away, so I can't be certain of the exact time…" he mumbled sheepishly.

"Ah!" Finny suddenly exclaimed from where he was standing with the rest of the servants a respectful distance away, and the group turned (or in the case of Woodley, Grimsby, and Irene on the couch across from me, looked up) in response. "We saw Mister Sebastian during the night!" he declared, waving his raised arm a little.

"Miss Arya and I did too, we did!" Mey-rin chirped before I could even open my mouth, and Doyle set to scribbling with renewed frenzy.

"Around what time was that?" he asked of us. Mey-rin and I looked at each other helplessly –right now I was kinda kicking myself for not paying attention to such a vital thing as the time of Sebastian's visit when he'd given us the owl. Goddamn it, I _knew_ he was going to/had died, why couldn't I have paid attention to such crucial chronological details!?

There needed to be an instruction manual for these types of things.

"Umm, let's see…" Finny flustered quietly. "I think it was around 2.50 AM. That would mean Sebastian would be last to be murdered…isn't that right?"

"Why did he go to see you?" Doyle asked promptly.

"He came to take stock of the food with me, and ordered this guy to clean the fireplaces." Bardroy said with a wave of his hand at Finny, who nodded happily in agreement.

"And he swung by to give me and Mey-rin a carrier owl to dispatch in the morning." I chipped in before Mey-rin could speak for the both of us again, feeling slightly left out, and Ciel blinked slowly.

"An owl?" he repeated, and Bardroy sighed, folding his arms.

"An owl, unlike a pigeon, can fly in a storm. Shrewd as usual, that guy." he commented sadly, and Eary Grey fixed Mey-rin and I with his cold grey eyes.

"What did the letter say?"

"I was not privy to its contents, no, sir." the maid replied promptly, and I shrugged and shook my head.

_In hindsight, I really should be taking notes. "What One Should And Should Not Do During A Canon Scenario," by Aryana Thompson. Number One, be an inquisitive little shit and pry into everyone and everything. Number Two, don't take anything whatsoever for granted._

"He might've sent it to the police!" Doyle said in excitement, and Ciel nodded in weary acknowledgment.

"Even the phone lines are out due to this storm, after all." he sighed, and Earl Grey frowned pensively, folding his hands in his lap.

"But if Sebastian was killed last, things get complicated, don't they?" Doyle asked worriedly, looking down at the notebook in his lap. "The only two who could have created a locked room scenario in the Earl's quarters were Mister Phelps, who was within, and Sebastian, who possessed the key to said room. In that case, the theory that the culprit is Sebastian is most plausible, however…Sebastian was himself murdered."

"So…" Lau mused as he picked up his teacup. "The butler lad conspired with another, with whom he committed the murders, then was himself killed to ensure his silence after an argument over the ill-gotten gains or somesuch?"

"…that is possible." Ciel admitted grudgingly, leaning his chin on a curled hand. "Then the likelihood is great of the perpetrator being one who would profit from disposing of them all."

"Quite so, quite so!" the Chinaman agreed with a light little laugh. "Money makes the world go 'round, after all."

"Mister Phelps is the scion of the Blue Star Line-"

 _Is that a motherfucking White Star Line, vis-a-vis the Titanic, reference?_ I thought with a half-appalled blink.

"-a leader in intergrated maritime transport. He lacked presence, but he was capable enough to be put in charge of the Trade Division and had recently expanded the business into the Asian sphere." Ciel said as he lowered his hand and leaned back in his chair. Then he extended a lazy finger, pointing to Lau, sitting on the couch beside Doyle. "Lau. He was a competitor of yours."

The Chinaman paused for a moment, then smiled slyly and lifted his cup to his lips. "Hmm… I suppose he would be at that." he murmured.

"Furthermore, you carry a needle in that capricious sleeve of yours, don't you?" Ciel asked without lowering his finger, to the room's general astonishment, and there were a few suspicious murmurs as Lau calmly lowered his cup and interlaced his hands until his sleeves covered them completely.

"Indeed I do!" he admitted without shame or any kind of attempt at concealment. "However, this is an instrument of Oriental medicine." he added cheerfully as he withdrew a six-inch-long, tapering steel needle from his left sleeve. Irene squealed as everyone else started murmuring, and I watched with some amusement as Doyle turned pale and shrank away on Lau's other side. Since Ran-Mao was between me and Lau, I felt reasonably secure in my position…though I did subtly inch myself away just a little.

"Th-then you killed Phelps!" Woodley roared, lunging to his feet.

"You were snooping around the Earl's bedchamber just now! You were destroying evidence, weren't you!?" Grimsby snarled, slamming his hands on the table as he rose as well.

"Oh my word~! Don't you think you're being a bit rash?" Lau singsonged with a teasing little shrug, a placating smile plastered on his face. "What trick are you proposing I used to make a locked room out of the dressing room, which is so far in the back? It has no door leading to the outside, and I hate to disappoint you, but even we Chinese cannot pass through vents." he laughed, then flapped his sleeve at Ciel. "First of all, please remember I do have an alibi for the time of Lord Siemens's murder. Really, Lord Earl! You can be such a bully~! This is no time to be getting back at me, you know!"

"Should the man who suggested I be confined in the first place be saying such a thing?" Ciel deadpanned, then huffed and took a sip of his tea. "Well, even if you had conspired with Sebastian, no one could have killed all three victims. I was merely teasing you."

"You're right!" Doyle gasped after a moment's consideration.

"What is it you mean?" Irene asked in confusion, and Doyle quickly bent over his little notebook.

"If we make a simple chart of it…" he mumbled, scribbling frantically, before lifting it up and showing us the open page, which had a hastily drawn chart with little chibi versions of all our faces on the left column, and the faces of Georg von Siemens, Sebastian, and Patrick Phelps (along with their times of death) on the top line. X and O marks beneath the victims tallied whether or not we had an alibi for each murder. "-this is what we get. Only Earl Phantomhive could have murdered Lord Siemens around 1.10 AM. Only Sebastian could have murdered Mister Phelps around 2.38 AM. Finally, anyone but the Earl and I could have murdered Sebastian around 2.50 AM. Thus! Even if the culprit had Sebastian for an accomplice, it is still impossible for one person to have murdered all of the victims!"

"If one person couldn't have done it, then the guests who came to the party as a pair must be the guilty ones!" Woodley blurted, clenching his fist at the two theater people.

"Sod that!" Grimsby barked, coming to his feet furiously. "It isn't bad enough that we're locked up in this godforsaken place, but you have the gall to treat us like common criminals!?"

"Grimsby, calm down!" Irene pled as she lunged to wrap her arms around his waist, which very well may have prevented him from jumping across the table to take Woodley out.

"Yes, please do calm down, gentlemen!" Doyle said, trying to soothe their boiling tempers. "Besides, this isn't so simple a case as to be solved by the mere fact that two people would have been able to commit the cri-"

"SIMPLE OR NOT, I COULDN'T CARE LESS!" Woodley roared, slamming both of his balled fists down on the table, before lurching to his feet. "I can't bear to be here any longer!"

"And where is it you intend to go, sir?" Ciel asked placidly, seemingly unruffled by all the shouting, his calm, smooth British accent so thick I could practically taste it. "Under these circumstances, I would be grateful if you would refrain from taking liberties."

"How dare you accuse me of taking liberties!? When these horrors are all your-!" Woodley shouted, then apparently choked on his fury, glaring at Ciel with molten eyes.

"All my what?" Ciel asked as his lazily rested his cheek on one hand.

Woodley grit his teeth, then drew himself up, stabbing a beringed finger at Ciel like the judgment of a god. "I-! I know what you're up to! Truth is, you're the mastermind behind all of this, aren't you!?" he roared, and Ciel finally deigned to smirk, lowering his hand.

"I am afraid I do not know to what it is you are referring, but please do compose yourself." he said smoothly, but Woodley only seemed further incensed.

"You called us here with the intention of putting an end to us all along! _You dog of the Queen!"_ he screamed, and Ciel's demeanor twitched slightly, his eye becoming cold. Woodley clearly noticed, as he edged behind the couch he had been sitting on, gripping the back with one ring-laden hand as he continued to point at Ciel with the other. "I'll have you let me go now! Who in their right mind would stay here like a lamb to slaughter!?"

"Please wait." Doyle gasped, coming to his feet and stretching out a hand in supplication. "To leave in this storm would be folly! Staying here as a group would be best to avoid risking suspicion as well…"

"I will not be dictated to be some medical quack!" Woodley snarled as he whirled around, slugging Doyle right in the face as he threw the future author onto the table with a _crash_ and a cry, amidst the loud rattle-clang of cutlery and the sharp _snap_ and clatter of broken ceramics.

"Woodley." Ciel said as the older man huffed in exertion, slowly lowering his cup back onto his saucer. His single blue eye gleamed cold and dead, his frozen posture and devestatingly collected voice a chilling counterpoint to Woodley's flailing dramatics. "I am telling you to sit. So _sit down. **Now**."_

"H-" Woodley choked, turning sharply to glare at Ciel now as he cocked his fist back. "How _dare you tell me what to do!?"_ he roared, now starting to swing for the tiny aristocrat.

"My lord!" Arthur Conan Doyle cried in alarm as I preemptively lunged to my feet, my hand flying to my side where my combat knife was sheathed.

However, I was once again too late to do anything of merit.

Tanaka, moving faster than any human being had a right to, never mind an old man of probably plus-sixty, moved swiftly into the arch of Woodley's body and seized his arm, twisting and using a combination of his own leverage and Woodley's momentum to whirl the diamond merchant around into a bodyslam on the ground, holding his arm at an angle out to the side as he jabbed his knee firmly into the small of Woodley's back and everyone cried out in surprise.

"My apologies, Mister Woodley." Tanaka said calmly as the younger gentleman choked in a mixture of rage and pain. "However, at this manor, all who seek to harm the young master…" Here he twisted the arm he had in his steely grip, making Woodley yelp. "- _whoever_ they may be, shall, by we servants… _shown no mercy."_

As if all on the same line, the party guests' heads were twitched up to look at the other three servants. Mey-rin's gawkishness seemed suddenly diminished, her visible eye abruptly sharp and piercing –Finny's own pupils seemed to have been encircled by lighter green rings, giving his eyes a detached and somewhat eerie, mechanical quality. Bardroy didn't really show any visible change, but he stood straighter, and the cigarette in his mouth was cocked at an aggressive angle.

I, of course, didn't look any more threatening than usual…or at least, so I hoped. Then I realized that my combat knife as still half-unsheathed, and slowly, as quietly as I could, slid it back in. I concealed a wince as best I could as the steel blade made a slight, slow rasping _hissss_ against the leather, which evidently I needed to oil.

Tanaka smiled peacefully, hopefully drawing any attention away from my faux pas. "Please do understand, sir." he asked of Woodley, who scowled, his slicked-back hair falling in slight disarray around his face.

"What is wrong with this cursed house?! Damn you-!" he snarled.

Doyle, however, rose from his sprawled position on the ground with a sparkle in his hazel eyes. "Wh-what in the world did he just do? I never even saw him move!" he gasped excitedly, and behind him, Lau smiled and waved a hand in demonstration.

"I believe that was _bartitsu_ , a classic martial art of Japanese export." he chirped as Doyle half-glanced over his shoulder to look at him.

"Ba…baritsu, you say? That the first I've ever heard of it!" Doyle exclaimed, butchering the pronunciation completely as his eyes gleamed even brighter, lunging up from the ground and putting pen to his notepad like a fangirl preparing to get an autograph. "I do beg your pardon, but won't you tell me more about this baritsu-"

"Tanaka." Ciel interrupted coldly as he took a sip of his tea. "That will do." He glanced down with mocking care at the disheveled diamond merchant as he shakily got up onto on fours. "Mister Woodley. You will follow our instructions, won't you?"

"Tch!" Woodley scoffed as as Doyle's sparkle-eyed conference with Lau was cut off.

"Well then," Ciel sighed as he set his cup back on its dainty china saucer. "As things currently stand, the Professor is the only one among us who, _without a doubt_ , cannot be the culprit. Thus, I believe the safest and fairest option is to have the Professor decide on how we should proceed."

"M-me!?" Doyle stammered in shock, disingenuously pointing to himself in surprise, the right corner of his mouth and the corresponding side of his cheek already starting to darken with a bruise.

"Yes. For my part, I've no desire to leave the perpetuators endlessly wandering about my manner." Ciel said with a dismissive shrug, and Doyle blinked sheepishly.

"W-well, I can't say I'm not of the same mind on that account, but…"

"Of course, the…" Irene flustered, looking at Grimsby as she clasped her hands together.

"Same goes for us…yeah?" Grimsby finished, and a slow smirk crawled across Ciel's face.

"That settles it, then." he said calmly, gesturing briefly at the window as the rain continued streaming down against the glass. "We gave nothing but time until the storm lets up, anyhow." The tiny earl folded his hands together and rested his chin atop them, smiling angelically at the rest of us. "So what do you say we hunt down and corner the culprits at our leisure? Hmm, Professor~?"

Doyle stared at him for several moments, an expression something between shocked, awed, and appalled on his bruised face, before he inhaled shakily and sat down again, opening up his notebook again and taking up his pen.

"Hearing your sides of the story has made everything much clearer, but…what concerns me the most is the whereabouts of the key to the Earl's quarters. As it stands, only Sebastian, who was in possession of the key, could have killed Mister Phelps, but…if the key had passed into the hands of another, that would change matters."

"But now that Sebastian has been killed, can it not be said that if anyone does have the key, that person is the culprit?" Ciel suggested crossing one leg over the other as he leaned back into his padded armchair.

"Quite." Doyle agreed with a nod.

"Then we first have to check whether or not the butler has the key. If he does have it, consider that theory squashed. We'll be back to square one." Earl Grey mused, tapping a finger against the arm of his own chair.

"You're right. To that point, I think it best that we always conduct ourselves in groups from now on. I do not wish to have a lady accompany us to the makeshift morgue, so Misses Irene and Arya and Mister Grimsby, if you would please remain here."

"Alright." The parakeet-haired ginger agreed, nodding stiffly as Irene leaned in towards him.

Doyle gulped as he glanced to the other side. "And…Mister Woodley as well…" he quavered, making the diamond merchant huff as he smoothed some of his disarrayed hair back against his skull.

"I'll be fine here, enjoying some tea with Ran-Mao!" Lau chirped as she nodded silently from where she was leaning her chin against his chest.

"I've nothing to do here, so I'll come with~!" Earl Grey drawled, raising his hand like a student in school from near the back.

"Earl Phantomhive, I do hate to impose, but would you take us around the manor?" Doyle asked as the preassigned party got to their feet.

"As the servants are more familiar with the manor below stairs, let's have them lead the way. All right?" Ciel asked as he glanced towards Finny and Bardroy, who both straightened.

"Yes, my lord." they chimed, and Ciel spared a half-glance to the other two standing servants.

"Tanaka, Mey-rin, stay here and see to our guests."

"Yes, sir." Mey-rin chirped a half-beat behind Tanaka, bowing nervously.

I half-rose, wondering whether or not I should try to bully my way into the group heading down to the morgue anyways. But then again…what good would it do? I mean, seriously, other than wanting to gawk (and maybe poke Sebastian, because I reeeeeally wanted to get back at him for everything up to and exceeding saddling me with Daemon), I really didn't have any reason or motive for being down there. In fact, I might even excite suspicion, and I did not _quite_ put it past Ciel to switch his assigned scapegoat from whoever-it-was to me if I started putting my nose where he didn't think it belonged.

"Let's be off, then." the earl said briskly, as Finny and Bardroy moved to take the lead out of the room. So, I relaxed back against the slippery horsehair couch with a sigh –then, glancing to the side, thought better of it and slid over to one of the now-vacant armchairs, taking my cup and saucer with me. Irene, Grimsby, Woodley, Mey-rin, Tanaka, Lau, Ran-Mao, and I looked at each other somewhat awkwardly as the tramping footsteps faded away, to be replaced by the sibilant watery hiss of rain streaming down the roof, windows, and outside walls, and the occasional rumble of low thunder overhead.

 _Wow…_ I thought with a strained grimace after a good three or four minutes of solid staring, tapping the bandaged pad of my finger slowly against the delicate painted porcelain of my cup. _This just got…uh, awkward._

Lau suddenly sighed, throwing his arm over the back of the couch he and Ran-Mao now held solitary reign over. "Oh deeeeear~" he drawled luxuriously. "However shall we spend this time? Hey, you," He craned his neck to look at Tanaka standing behind him. "Can you get me and Ran-Mao a pillow? I fancy a good nap, since we've been woken up at all hours due to this _dreadful_ business."

"Of course, sir." Tanaka said with a courtly half-bow, turning with a click of his heels to exit the room. Mey-rin scurried after him, probably to provide an alibi if one was so needed.

I rolled my eyes as I took another sip of my warm tea, sweetened by the addition of about three or four spoonfuls of sugar –because, as stated before, I needed the energy. Besides, I had found in my nearly six or seven months of dwelling in various time periods in Britain, that I really couldn't stand most blends of tea without more or less dumping the contents of an entire sugarbowl into the pot. The herb leaves were always too bland otherwise.

Another long few minutes passed, before Tanaka and Mey-rin returned with a large square pillow and handed it to Lau, who promptly swung his legs up onto the couch and leaned back against the arm, stuffing the pillow behind his back and head with a sigh of content. Ran-Mao, cuddled up against him, seemed content to use Lau's body as her mattress, and the two of them to all intents and purposes, promptly fell asleep.

As I finished the last gulp of tea, I stifled a huge sigh.

_And then there were six…_

_***Time Skip***_

Several cups of tea (and a prerequisite visit to the ladies room later), the morgue party had _finally_ returned, with the news that A) Sebastian had not been in possession of the key to Ciel's rooms, B) we were also about to be searched for the key, and C) his own quarters had had a wardrobe full of adorable kitties –which I was somewhat sorry to have missed. Despite vocal protests from Finny, the cats had all been contained in Sebastian's room before being thrown out into the rain to make their own way in the world…though personally, I had a feeling that Sebastian would somehow find a way to smuggle them all back into the house and his aforementioned closet before the sun had set very far in the west.

"–and so, we would like to look through everyone's rooms and luggage." Doyle was finishing, as Earl Grey lingered in the background with Ciel, the former looking bored and ravenous and the latter looking merely bored. "The ladies may check one another's things, so you won't have to worry about us men looking through them. What do you say?"

"Very well." Irene fluttered.

"Go right ahead!" Lau chirped, sitting up from where he had been laid out on the couch as Ran-Mao mimicked him.

"Do what you want!" Woodley scoffed, propping his elbow up on his knee and resting his head on that hand.

Arthur Conan Doyle blinked, looking nonplussed at the lack of resistance from anybody's end, but he nevertheless headed off with the other guys as Irene, Mey-rin, Ran-Mao, and I remained in the drawing room, looking at each other askance.

"So, um, since Mey-rin and I lodge in the same rooms, we can search those first, 'kay?" I eventually suggested into the heavy quiet, trying on an encouraging smile. Irene mimicked it, though hers was a bit more faltering, and Ran-Mao inclined her head once in silent assent.

"Yes, that sounds most efficient." the opera star agreed placidly, and Mey-rin gave me a friendly nudge as I got to my feet and walked past her.

"Yes, that's best, yes it is!" she chimed happily, which made me blink. It was kinda trippy having so many adults (a grand total of three!) unanimously agree with my input, so it ended up being Mey-rin who led us down into the belowstairs servants quarters as I trailed behind, somewhat poleaxed by my sudden apparent authority. Really, it drove home the point I'd been reading about for years; in times of distress or upheaval, people instinctively obeyed and trusted the first solid leadership they were offered –no matter the source, no matter who the source was, and no matter what kind of leadership they offered.

Founding principle of dictatorship and coups, that was.

But anyways. I was briefly concerned about my apocalypse bag and, y'know, it's infinite expansion mojo, before I remembered back to the day when I first got thrown in this world. The policemen had searched my bag, as per usual procedure with vagrants (as far as _I_ knew), and they hadn't found jack due to some other qualifier thingamajig that Britain had no doubt bound up with the magic he put on my bag. All the infinite expansiony-ness vanished, and the bag was filled with my everyday clothes and crap that no one would be ashamed (or futuristic) to have. It was like the suitcase in _Fantastic Beasts!_

I paused.

_In retrospect, that may have been where Britain got the idea to begin with…_

Back down the paneled hallway we went, through the servant's door, down the creaky stairs, and into me and Mey-rin's room. As we were the people under inspection, Mey-rin and I stood stoically by as Ran-Mao and Irene methodically ransacked our stuff…well, I stood with my journal/notebook in hand, figuring that the arcane symbols inside probably wouldn't do me any favors upon discovery, and Mey-rin fluttered, nervous and seemingly convinced that at any moment one of us would be exposed as a mass-murderer.

Where she got _that_ idea from, I had no notion.

Sure enough, as Irene refolded each article of clothing she came across and put it exactly where she had found it, and Ran-Mao slowly and systematically scattered both of our effects across the room –even trying on one of Mey-rin's spare frilly headbands at one point– they found nothing illicit from either of us. My gun was strapped to my hip, underneath the dress, and my combat knife was on the other side. I didn't know where Mey-rin hid her weapons –it was just barely possible that she didn't keep any in her private quarters, though personally I found that kinda dumb. If you felt threatened enough that you had and were trained in the use of weapons, you should have one handy, or at least within reach, at all times. Nothing was more plaintively useless than a weapon you didn't have access to.

Then again, she probably had at least two of her guns hidden away beneath her skirt just like I did.

There was a moment of crimson-faced embarrassment as Ran-Mao found one of my spare bras and lifted it curiously, but a startled, poisonous glare from me made her put it back, and beyond that, the searching of my and Mey-rin's room went off without a hitch.

"Well, it seems the key is not here. But at least we have nothing to fear from the two of you." Irene said gratefully, clasping her hands together before her as Ran-Mao finished rummaging around underneath my bed. Mey-rin and I exchanged looks –I couldn't tell what she was thinking, but _I_ was certainly remembering the Noah's Arc Circus and the lead-laden greeting she had given them.

_Though I'm not exactly one to talk._

"So, we do you guys now, yeah?" I asked with a curious tilt of my head at Irene, walking over a few steps and tossing my book onto the duvet atop my mattress with a _plop_.

"Of course."

"Right, yes, well since Miss Ran-Mao's room is closest, let's search hers next." Mey-rin suggested brightly, looking at the dusty Ran-Mao as she wriggled out from underneath my bed and sat up. Her golden eyes met the room's impartially and she nodded without speaking.

And so back up the stairs and into the non-plebeian parts of the manor we trotted. Personally, I was a bit off-put by the fact that Ran-Mao didn't share a room with her…employer? But, then again, such an act implied a hell of a lot more in this day and age than it did in mine. People of opposing genders only shared rooms if they were married…even opposite-sex siblings were generally housed in different –though admittedly adjacent– quarters. If Ran-Mao shared her rooms with Lau, then that would imply things that they perhaps did not wish to be implied.

…though honestly the way the two of them acted, gossip seemed to be the least of their concerns.

I was full of curiosity too –which turned out to be warranted. Ran-Mao had brought a metric _fuck-ton_ of interesting Chinese trinkets, knick-knacks, and tchotchkes along with her, which I spent a happy ten minutes opening, fiddling with, and oohing over. Mey-rin and Irene applied themselves a bit more industriously, searching the cabinets and pillowcases and all the rest of it, though in all fairness the painted jars and trick boxes could be _very_ clever hiding places for an elaborate manor key, especially since the average Victorian didn't get as much exposure to multicultural trick boxes as I had.

Convent Garden, back when I had Britain teaching me in the world of Hetalia, had once had a merchant with these neat tiny jewelry boxes, with a front made of a row of scalloped pegs and both the top and the bottom jutting out in a rim all the way around, with no visible opening or hinge anywhere. To open it, you had to slide back the bottom rim, which exposed the fact that the middle scalloped peg was loose, and slide it out, which exposed a keyhole and a small slot. Tip the box forward, and the key slid out of the hole –using it on the lock was self-explanatory. The box opened to reveal a tiny fragment of mirror set into the lid, and to relock, you closed the lid and turned the key in the opposite direction. The scalloped peg could be replaced and the bottom slid forward again, and once again the box was a little impenetrable keepsake.

Anyways, puzzle boxes were fun.

But despite how many interesting trinkets I closed and opened (and the sealed jar I found that happened to contain a sticky ball of opium…don't ask how I recognized it), there was no key in Ran-Mao's room either, elaborate manor one or otherwise. With reluctance, I left behind the treasure trove of interesting thingamajigs and followed after the others as we left to investigate the last of our group, Irene Diaz.

Deprived of interesting knick-knacks, I was forced to once again make constructive contribution to the group. Irene's room was a lot bigger than me and Mey-rin's, something that I hadn't noticed before in Ran-Mao's quarters due to the prolific amount of attention-drawing trinkets. Ran-Mao started at once for the trunk and valise of Irene's clothing, while Mey-rin headed for the wardrobe. I decided to be unconventional and started searching her vanity dresser, which largely contained bottles of perfume and those little jars of cosmetics. I paused at one, lifting it out of the drawer by the top and flicking it over in my hand read the label.

 _Completion Enhancer_  
_Ingredients, lead, oil-_

"Uh, y'know Miss Diaz, lead really isn't good for you to ingest." I said aloud, putting it on the top of the vanity table.

"Whyever not?" she asked innocently from behind me, where she stood patiently in the center of the room waiting for us to finish our search. I clicked my tongue against my teeth, flattening my hand on the tabletop with a sigh as I tried to formulate a way to explain modern scientific medical care.

"…lead and arsenic are poisons, although they can technically be "beneficial" in very, very incremental doses. Take too much and you get sick, or die, or both, and trust me, it doesn't take a lot to be too much. A pale complexion really ain't _that_ important to you, is it?" I asked candidly as I closed that drawer and started rummaging around in the one beneath it.

"That seems a bit far-fetched." Irene replied in gentle but clearly confident disbelief. "Everyone knows that it clears the skin. Don't be silly, dear."

"Yeah, and everyone also knows that opium, heroin, and hashish are harmless pain-killing drugs, and that germs are complete bunk." I muttered under my breath in a high, mincing voice, mocking her accent and surety of speech quietly to myself as I rummaged around the middle drawer. "Lava also makes for wonderful laser-hair-removal, but ya don't see me jumping into a volcano."

Victorian medical dumbassery aside, our search was proceeding well. The vanity containing nothing illicit, I mentally moved on to other kinds of places to hide a key, dusting my hands off as I straightened.

_Now, if I had killed someone and had an implacating piece of evidence, where would I hide it?_

Definitely not the wardrobe or my personal effects, since they'd be the first things to be searched. The fireplace was a good notion, since it was a place people usually tried to avoid, being hot and full of flames which made touching and feeling around a bad idea. I took a poker and jabbed about at the charred logs, with embers running through the blackened wood like glowing veins of heat. There wasn't any brittle _clink_ of metal-against-metal, which was good news for Irene, and I briefly spared a moment to wince to myself.

Glancing covertly to one side, then the other, I casually made sure no one was directly observing what I was doing in the fireplace. I then moved the point of the poker to the dusty grey ash that lay around the inside of the fireguard, scratching a pentacle in as neatly as possible. I casually looked over both shoulders, then scratched in a few sigils, muttering something under my breath.

 _"Thauma."_ I whispered, and gave a bone-deep shudder as the air around me suddenly iced over. From where I stood, the temperature dropped from a mildly chilly spring day to the very depths of a frozen winter night. As I held my breath and leaned over into the fireplace, the flames shrunk and died down, and I saw a coat of frost crusting on some of the iron bars. Moving quickly, I ran my hand along the bricks, feeling for something that would indicate a key or a lever to open a hiding compartment. Nothing, nothing, nothing, noth- _holyshit **hot** -!_

I bit back a yelp and yanked my hand away from the flue as the cold suddenly dispersed and the soot-smeared brick, having been baked for hours by rising currents of heat and flames, nearly seared the skin off my palm.

 _"Owwwww_ , fuck…" I whispered vehemently, shaking my wounded hand as my sooty palm throbbed in pain. Luckily, the other ladies seemed unaware of my accident.

_Note to self, maintaining that spell requires practice, concentration, and not sticking my hand in a fireplace again until I'm sure I won't burn it off._

"Oh no! I'm such a scatterbrain for leaving that out…" Irene exclaimed behind me, and I instantly whipped around, sticking my burned hand behind my back and attempting to look innocent. The cause of her words, however, was Mey-rin looking at a three-tier folding picture frame with only one of the oval portraits filled, showing Irene sitting down with Grimsby standing beside her. I wandered over, gingerly smearing the dirt and ash on my hand on the side of my dress.

"I had not heard that you two were lovers, so I was surprised yesterday, I was." the cherry-haired maid explained, and Irene smiled sheepishly.

"Oh, do forgive me! We haven't been very open about it, you see…" she admitted, blushing and placing a hand to her cheek as she smiled happily. "Grimsby and I are twelve years apart, so it embarrasses me to tell people about us…"

"Twelve!?" Mey-rin spluttered. "You look nothing of the sort!"

Irene giggled. "Oh~! You are too kind. Thank you so much." she said coyly, and Mey-rin's glasses flashed as the opera singer turned away.

"What do you eat to stay looking like that?" she mumbled to herself, then glanced at the opened valise and sighed as she knelt down and started rummaging inside. Mey-rin blinked as she picked up a reverse-bell-shaped bottle, giving a little shiver as she looked at the dark red liquid inside. It looked a bit like blood, but…the hell was Irene doing with something like that?

"…is this…?" Mey-rin whispered as the though on the same tangent of thought, her hand shaking, and jumped as I spoke above her.

"Nah. Not viscous enough."

She craned her neck to look at me. "'Ow on earth do you know that, Miss Arya?" she squeaked, and I sweatdropped.

"Ehehehe…experi…ence?" I tried with a placating smile, and rubbed the back of my neck, remembering just in time not to do it with the hand that still stung in pain. "I swear it wasn't, uh, anything that was my fault."

_Please do not question that please do not question that please do not question that please do not-_

"KYAAAAAH!" Irene screeched from behind us, making both me and Mey-rin whip around as she dropped the bottle back into the small trunk. Ran-Mao was apparently unsatisfied with the clothing options for her perusal, and had plopped a pair of Irene's drawers (Victorian female underwear that always reminded me of knee-length puffy sorts) on her head like a hat. "You must not wear that on your head!"

"Hey! Miss Ran-Mao!" Mey-rin squeaked in equal mortification, rushing to join Irene in attempting to explain to Ran-Mao how inappropriate her actions were –I stayed where I was, content to let another person make the social faux pas for once. "Oh my word! What _do_ you think you are doing!?"

_***Time Skip***_

"So in the end it was nowhere to be found…" Doyle sighed as he plopped back down onto the same sofa in the drawing room he had used before. We had all taken our previous positions, out of habit –I'd gingerly curled my fist around a fork, hoping the cool metal would soothe my burn until I got some real first aid on it. According to the future author, none of the males had had the key in their possessions either, which brought us right back to square one in our investigations.

"At this point, we can only assume that Sebastian had already hidden it elsewhere." Ciel stated in disappointment, and Lau smirked from over by Doyle.

"Or that he threw it out the window. I mean a key's a small thing, so if it were swept away or buried because of the storm, we'd have no hope of finding it." he postulated, and Finny immediately straightened bolt upright.

"Excuse me!" he said loudly, drawing everyone's attention. "I'll go look for it outside!"

"I will go look outside as well, I will!" Mey-rin seconded, placing a hand on her chest.

Ciel blinked in surprise, then sighed and gestured with one hand. "While it's true that finding it would give us a hint or two about the murderer, there's no need to go out of your way to-"

"I-! I want to get to the bottom of this!" Finny cried, squeezing his eyes shut as his hands clenched into fists, cutting Ciel off without even caring. "I'm not very smart, so I can't find the killer by thinking it through like you, young master! But I could find a key!" he added, his bright green eyes snapping open as his spine went ramrod stiff. "If that key will help you solve the case even a little, I'd like to try finding it!"

Finny and Mey-rin exchanged determined glances, then dashed out the door as Bardroy belatedly moved to stop them. "Ah! Hey, you guys…" he spluttered, throwing a glance behind himself as he ran out after them. "Sorry! Excuse us!"

Ciel was left with a surprised look on his face and one hand outstretched, as though he'd like to fetch them back, as the sound of the trio's retreating footsteps pounded down the hall and we heard the distant slam of a door. Then he sighed and smirked a little, pulling his arm back and resting his cheek on that fist, smiling placidly to himself. I wondered what he was thinking –if he was secretly touched by the loyalty of his servants, or amused in the fact that they were unknowingly so desperate to aid a demon.

For a while, there was silence. Warned by my previous experiences of long waits supplied with much tea, I only sipped from the dainty china cup before me, savoring the warmth and doing my best to ignore the flavor, as I had already garnered enough prim looks from the others during my previous raids on the sugar bowl. I really couldn't understand the people that loved coffee and tea to the point of having them as staples of their diet. Drinking crushed-leaf and ground-bean water tasted pretty much exactly what it sounded like on the box, and my tastebuds longed for some lemonade or an energy drink. The planty taste wasn't really disagreeable, especially (as mentioned) with heaps of sugar, but it got tiresome after a while and I missed my flavor-punching American goods. (As unhealthy as they were.)

Lau took out a pipe and lit up, in a very ornate ritual of rolling and burning and doing all manner of things to a pea-sized ball of something dark and sticky. Ciel wandered over to the window, watching the rain stream down the cold glass with a somber, brooding expression on his face. Like me, the others fidgeted with the teacups, some drinking, others merely toying with them, or staring pensively into the translucent amber-brown depths.

"Say." Grimsby finally piped up. "Sitting here in utter silence is stifling in itself. How about we play a game of cards or something?" he asked, rising as I made a face. I only knew how to play Old Maid and Go Fish…not even poker, despite Prussia's enthusiastic attempts to sucker me into a game with him and Romano. "I brought along a deck of cards, so I'll go to my room and get it."

"Please wait, if you're going, we should all go." Doyle interjected nervously, leaning forward as he prepared to rise.

Grimsby blinked. "But I'll be right back."

"As long as we do not know which us is behind these murders, the soundest course of action is to move as a group to avoid having any more victims." Arthur Conan Doyle explained, gesturing a little, and Lau blew out a long white stream of smoke. I shifted as a waft of it crossed me by, wrinkling my nose at the semi-familiar scent of opium –not that it was unpleasant, quite the opposite, actually: it smelled floral, kinda like wet dandelions in spring or something similar. The discomfort had to do more with the whole "fiendishly addictive drug" package.

"True, that's the best if one of us is the guilty party!" he hummed, sounding just a bit floaty –though definitely not intoxicated. I figured, being a purveyor of the stuff, Lau would have a pretty strong tolerance for opium. "If it _is_ one of us, that is." he added ominously.

"…what do you mean?" Grimsby asked suspiciously, and Lau smiled, gesturing a little bit with his long thin pipe.

"There's nothing to it!" he chirped. "I meant exactly what I just said."

Earl Grey frowned pensively. "If the murderer isn't here among us, where are you saying he is?" he asked, and Irene pursed her lips delicately.

"For instance, he arrived before the storm and is hiding outside…something like that?"

Ciel scoffed from over by the window. "Even so, would it not be impossible for him to enter a locked room or come in out of the storm to wander about the manor without leaving footprints?" he said scathingly, and Lau gave a slow, ominous smile.

"What if there exists a thirteenth person who can make the impossible possible?" he suggested slyly.

"Rubbish! That could never be!" Woolley snapped.

Lau raised a slow eyebrow. "Never, you say?" he asked coyly. "In this world, it's absolutes like "never" that can never be. If someone who negates that _absolute_ is lurking in this castle and waiting for the ideal moment in which to target our lives…he may already be closer than we think." Lau's eyes opened wickedly. "That thirteenth guest who ought not to exist…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 4.54 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 24th, 2019, 11.29 AM USA Central Time


	33. That Butler, Coda (Part 2)

_Arya's POV:_

Woodley scoffed again. "Hmph! There's no way such a fantastical person can-"

Hardly had the words left his lips before the door to the drawing room was slammed open and Bardroy, Finny, and Mey-rin shoved their way into the gap.

"Young master!" the cook cried, taking it upon himself as the eldest of the trio to take the lead. "We've caught someone dodgy!"

 _Don't laugh._ I thought as my mouth vainly tried to twitch upwards, biting down of the corner of my lips to keep them in place. _Don't you dare fucking laugh. This is a murder investigation and a new suspect popped up (even though it's Sebastian in disguise), you aren't cleared of all possible suspicion yet don't you **dare fucking laugh**!_

A snort did escape me, but I managed to muffle it into a sort of alarmed cough that blended nicely with the medley of cries that broke out upon the servants' unexpected interruption.

"Hey!" Bardroy snapped, turning to glare fiercely at their captive. "Get in here, you!"

I couldn't see who exactly was pushing him forward (I suspected Tanaka), but regardless, a dripping wet man with a hawklike nose and slicked-back black hair stepped calmly into the room, his face stoic and impassive as he regarded us all. A thick rope was wound multiple times around his torso, pinning his arms to his side and his hands behind his back, like he was about to make obeisance to us or something.

"Eh?" Earl Grey gasped, slowly turning and climbing to his feet as he stared at our unexplained guest in shock. "Wai– so there really was something else!? Where on earth was he hiding?!"

"…you are…" Ciel mumbled under his breath as Woodley leapt to his feet.

"So that means he is the killer!?"

"Heh." Lau smirked as he slowly got to his feet, drawing himself up by a hand on the back of our couch. "I never for a moment imagined that the thirteenth guest would _himself_ come calling. I too am just a teensy bit taken aback!" He strolled over to the "mystery guest" and then clapped a hand on the man's shoulder, smiling a sunny and vacant smile. "So, who are you?" he asked brightly.

A tick mark grew on Ciel's head. "You're back to that again!?" he snapped incredulously at the innocently beaming Chinaman, before his attention was drawn by Sebastian…er, the guest, speaking up.

"Are you asking for my name?" he asked in a voice that sounded like Sebastian with his mouth full of plums, and Ciel narrowed his eye.

"Long time no see…eh, Jeremy?" the earl asked ponderously, and Lau blinked from where he stood beside the now-named Jeremy.

"Lord Earl, do you know this old man?" he asked, ignoring Sebastian's cocked _"did you just call me old?"_ eyebrow as Ciel deadpanned.

"Uh…yes, I do." He cleared his throat and stepped over, standing before "Jeremy" and gesturing to him with one hand in introduction. "This is vicar Jeremy Rathbone. He is a popular advisor at the local church and something of a celebrity."

"Please just call me plain old Jeremy." Sebastian said with a winning smile, and Doyle blinked.

"You are…a vicar?" he asked skeptically, but Woodley interrupted, lunging to point fingers again (literally) at the bound man.

"How can you expect me to believe a suspicious fellow like him!? Only the thirteenth person, who has no alibi to speak of, could've committed the murders! Any way you slice it, it's got to be him!" he roared, and Sebastian, er, _Jeremy_ , chuckled.

"That logic of yours is truly nonsensical, Mister Woodley."

Woodley gasped and jerked back as if stung. "How do you know my name!?"

"Jeremy" smirked and then leaned uncomfortably close to the other man, appearing to study his face intently as Woodley automatically raised his hands before him in a defensive gesture. "Oh, it's quite obvious from the rings adorning your fingers. Large diamonds of that size are mined in South Africa, and the unique round-brilliant cut of those diamonds is possible only with the latest polisher developed by the Woodley Company. I have also heard that Daniel Anderson, a London jeweler, was aggressively promoting them to society ladies as the rarest of gems still not widely available on the market, you see. Thus," he finished off. "If among the guests at Earl Phantomhive's dinner party, there is one individual wearing such rare rings, he is most likely to be the president of the Woodley Company…you, Mister Woodley. Was I wrong?" Jeremy asked, to Woodley's obvious consternation.

"That aside, how in the world did you…rather, since when? And why are you here?" Doyle stammered, probably intending to be interrogative but really just sounding as shocked and bewildered as the rest of us. Sebastian/Jeremy sighed.

"Dear me, questions, questions." he mock-tsked, then turned to Bardroy, who had been holding an equally soaked black Gladstone bag this entire time. "You there. Open my bag, if you would."

Throwing a glance at Ciel to make sure his action was allowable, Bardroy pried open the clasp with a grunt and a soft _click_. Peering in, the blond cook gasped, the apparently heavy bag slipping down a little bit in his grasp as it was revealed to contain-

"Whoa! That's Mister Sebastian's owl!" Mey-rin squeaked, seeing the bird we had released –which was indeed a Snowy– curled up within the black leather bag, utterly still. " I-is it dead, is it?" she quavered, noticing the same thing I did as Sebastian/Jeremy bent over the bag.

"No, it was acting up, so I tranquilized it for a brief spell. It will wake up momentarily." he reported calmly, and Funny jolted.

"E-even if it was acting up, that's much too cruel!" he spluttered in wounded outrage, clenching his fists in a rather effeminate display of indignance.

"Please do take a look at the letter around its leg." Jeremy said without taking notice, and Ciel bent down to retrieve the long scroll of thin paper. He unrolled it delicately and stared at it for a few moments as Mey-rin flustered a few meters away, clearly anxious to see that she had done her duty and the proper message had been received.

Ciel's face grew grim, and he crumpled the letter wordlessly. "…it seems that he sent this letter to Jeremy anticipating that he himself would eventually be killed." he sighed heavily.

"Oh no…Mister Sebastian…" Mey-rin wobbled, verging on breaking down into tears once again.

"But that paper alone isn't proof that he's not the killer! I mean, if he managed to come here from outside the manor, he could've committed last night's murders too, right!?" Grimsby barked, and Sebastian/Jeremy sighed.

"Proving my innocence is quit simple. Look in my coat pocket." he said. Finny stepped over and frisked him, eventually withdrawing a long thin rectangle of crumpled colorful paper.

"A ticket…I think?" he announced to the assembly. "From the theater…"

"And the date on it?" Ciel asked.

"Yesterday…the ticket was purchased at the door for the evening performance on the 12th of March." Finny read off carefully. "The location and programme were…um…the el-ay-dee…" His green eyes suddenly cleared, and his furrowed brow smoothed over, as he apparently seemed to finally decipher the copperplate words. _"The Lady of the Lake_ at the Lyceum Theatre!"

 _"The Lady of the Lake_ is indeed being preformed at London's Lyceum now." Irene pitched in helpfully.

Sebastian/Jeremy shook his head in slow impatience. "Yes. Last night, I went to the Lyceum Theatre in London. The performance ended well past ten at night. Even if I'd caught a hansom cab and slipped the driver a sovereign to rush over here, it would have taken over two hours to reach this manor. Moreover, the streets are a veritable quagmire of mud, what with the rain, so it would have taken nearly twice as long as usual."

"You came by hansom in this downpour?" Irene asked in surprise. Bardroy shivered.

"I bet the river's overflowin' its banks with the storm, so there's no way a cab coulda made it over the bridge!" he scoffed.

Sebastian in the guise of Jeremy smiled calmly. "Of course there are any number of other ways to get here. On foot, by swimming…though to be fair, they are none of them ways I would recommend to average folk. There are as many means to an end as there are stars in the sky. However, the fact remains that there exists but one _truth."_

"And since you were in London last night, you could not have been involved with the murders? Is this the "truth" of which you speak?" Arthur Conan Doyle asked curiously, straightening his shoulders as the suspicious tension seemed to flow from him.

"Leave it to the masterly novelist to help me save my breath." Sebastian/Jeremy smiled, making Doyle gasp.

"What!?"

The disguised butler leaned in and evidently did his best to mimic Sherlock Holmes at his finest. "It's a simple feat to tell a person's occupation and such from their clothing and habits. First, you have a large writer's callus on the middle finger of your right hand. And it's shape differs from that of those who draw or paint…in other words, it goes to show just how much you write. Next, that blue smudge on your sleeve. This can happen when laundering fabric to which colored ink has adhered."

I thought guilty about my own, somewhat grungy, sleeves, belonging to my usual day dresses, and made a mental note to either roll them up better or apply my own laundering after they went through the wash. I hadn't really been rolling them up lately, since then the ink got on my wrists instead, and having a pitcher full of warm water being your typical substitution for a bath in the morning did not exactly lend itself to a thorough all-over scrubbing.

"And lastly, you have made a habit of noting on your cuffs with pencil story ideas as they strike you so you do not forget." Sebastian/Jeremy leaned in even more invasively and peered down Doyle's sleeve. "Pearl…India…secret room…sign…only a writer would do something like that, hmm?"

Rather than being offended by the sudden invasion of his personal space, Doyle looked in awe of the disguised vicar as he pulled away, eyes sparkling. "Amazing! You're like Doctor Bell, who was once my professor."

"Observing human beings is my hobby, you see." Sebastian/Jeremy said with a mild, modest smile, sending chills down my spine. The implications of that, knowing he was a demon, was just plain disturbing. He turned to the rest of his, assuming a more solemn expression. "Well then, now that I've relieved you of any suspicions towards me, would you untie me at once? It seems this manor is bursting with the fragrance of a heady mystery that will relieve me of my tedium."

Without so much as a by-your-leave, he took a seat, and it was a rather ruffled Doyle that began explaining just what had been going on this past day-and-a-half.

"…that covers everything which took place from the time of the first murder until the butler who summoned you was killed." he finished after ten minutes or so, and we all looked expectantly at the black-clad man sitting with his legs neatly crossed in one of the puffy singular armchairs. Sebastian/Jeremy pressed his gloved hands together meditatively.

"I see…I find it all very curious indeed." he hummed under his breath, then raised his voice. "May I examine the corpses first? They will speak to me of the bare facts most eloquently."

Doyle rose with a gentle _clack_ of his wooden chair legs. "Very well. Let us make for the wine cellar below."

"STOP!"

"Eh?" Doyle blinked.

Sebastian/Jeremy raised an illuminative finger. "Please carry each body to a _separate room_."

The author cocked his head in confusion. "May I ask why?"

Getting to his feet, the disguised vicar drew himself up stiffly, closing his eyes with a primly offended air. "Even the various scents of a case may yield clues. If the corpses are laid out together, their individual smells will mingle and be contaminated. And in a wine cellar, the scent of wine is especially strong…" He opened his eyes to glance at Ciel. "So would you be kind enough to lend us three rooms, Earl Phantomhive?"

Ciel sighed as he got to his feet. "All right. You lot," he added, glancing towards the three servants. "-take each corpse to a room of its own."

"Yes sir." they chorused.

"My lord, would you permit me to change my clothing in the interim?" Sebastian/Jeremy asked as Ciel walked by him, and the much-shorter earl paused, looking up.

"Oh…I think the previous Earl's clothes would be too small for you. Let me one you something from the late butler's wardrobe. Please follow me, if you would." he said courteously, suiting deeds to actions and leading the way regardless of whether or not the other male moved to follow.

I say Mey-rin tentatively waving at me from the doorway, and so, hoisting up my fluffy red skirts, I hurried over.

"Might you be helpin' us carry the bodies up, Miss Arya?" she asked in a hopeful undertone. I saw her fingers trembling from where they were clenched on the wooden doorframe. "Don't much fancy going down there with just Finny and Bardroy, I don't."

"Yeah, sure." I replied without really thinking, then made a silent face and groaned to myself behind her back as Mey-rin smiled brightly and started pulling me after the other two servants.

_I get to carry Sebastian's dead body. Fangirls eat your heart out…yaaaaay…oh, fuck my life._

_***Time Skip***_

It turned out that the mansion had a very creepy, very chilly underground basement made of stone. I completely understood Mey-rin's trepidation about going down here alone; the only things that prevented this place from being the leftovers from a horror movie set were a complete lack of rats and no suspicious rusty-red stains splattered about, though the heavy stone walls were slightly damp and the flames that lit our way flickered eerily, making our shadows bob and weave like films of liquid darkness.

"What is with that guy!?" Bardroy scoffed as we turned another corner, slightly swinging the lantern he was carrying as he gestured irritably and put his other hand on his hip, making the light flicker and dance even more. "He shows up outta nowhere and then starts actin' like he owns the place!"

"He's a vicar, but he acts like a policeman. An odd duck, he is." Mey-rin contributed placidly, carrying a makeshift stretcher of canvas and wooden sticks.

"Yeah, but…" Finny added uncertainly from her other side as he slowed down a little, carrying another stretcher. "I can't help feeling like he'll work this all out for sure."

"He does seem eerily competent, that's for certain." I chipped in as deadpan as I could, raising my own lantern a little higher as the liquid shadows on the walls shifted and danced, melting away.

Mey-rin and Bardroy paused as we came up to a pair of large wooden doors, glancing at the two of us askance.

"Hrn?"

"Why is that?"

Finny straightened under their scrutiny. "I can't really say why, but…I feel like it's okay for us to trust that man." he said staunchly.

I just shrugged without speaking, given as it was probably best to keep my trap shut at this point –I was good at keeping secrets and all, but generally speaking, as stated in one of my favorite fantasy books, _"You need never unsay what you never said in the first place."_ Silence was generally the safer route in situations like these…though of course that could look suspicious too, eventually.

Bardroy sighed as he grabbed the handle to one of the big oak doors. "Aw, brother. If ya trust people so easy, you're gonna get burned, you two." he sighed.

"I must agree." Mey-rin added sheepishly.

With a theatrical _creeeeeeeeeak_ of wood, Bardroy turned and pulled open the door, revealing a much larger cavernous space, one by my quick mental calculations exceeded the space under the manor house to begin with, since we had been walking for such a distance.

The stone ceiling was vaulted, with a series of thick pillars preventing the greater part of the house and/or the outside dirt from crushing the roof and burying the room. Two lanterns flanked the door, and two large iron chandeliers dangled from the roof, lit with ten massive candles each, so that despite the size of the room, everything was still lit, albeit dimly. Two dozen or so huge wooden barrels longer and wider than I was tall were propped on odd wooden stands or stood on their own rims within a slight alcove at the back of the room, and a series of (filled) wine racks two or three stories tall lined the left-hand wall.

Stunning deductive prowess enabled me to guess that this was the wine cellar, where the Phantomhives refined and stored their liquor.

Our footsteps echoed loudly in the quiet, vast stone space, and despite myself I felt a slight chill slide down my spine as we approached the three sheets laid out on the ground. The two shapes that I guessed to be Phelps and Georg von Siemens looked as neat and tidy as something you might find in a mortuary, but a pair of well-shined butler shoes and the beginnings of black slacks sticking out from the shape in the middle told me that Sebastian was a bit too tall to fit beneath the draping white fabric.

I took in a slow, measured breath, clutching the grip of the lantern a little tighter as Bardroy and Finny started laying out the stretchers, trying to calm the sudden increase in my pulse. This was the first time that I had ever personally handled a body, and sure, _one_ wasn't really a corpse, but the other two were. Two dead people that I would have to lift, manipulate, and carry.

 _Motherfucker, I shouldn't have said yes to this._ I thought for perhaps the thousandth time, inhaling and exhaling heavily before I laid my lantern on the ground, the sharp, acidic scent of wine and damp stone heavy in my nostrils, laying a flat, pungent taste over the back of my throat.

Mey-rin reverently lifted up the sheet that covered the middle corpse –which _was_ Sebastian– as Bardroy and Finny laid claim to the one on the right. "Mister Sebastian, sir, we will be moving you now, we will." she said gently as I forwent keeping my expensive red dress off the ground –I still, perhaps unwisely, hadn't changed out of it– and dropped the hem with my other hand, leaning down to pull the second stretcher over to us.

"You take the head, and I'll get the legs?" I suggested queasily, looking at the not-corpse beneath us. Mey-rin nodded and gently put her hands underneath the butler's broad shoulders in preparation to lift him up. Sebastian made a very convincing dead man; his head, arms, and hips drooped limply as we picked him up, and his body and clothes were chilly from lying on stone, and as I grabbed his ankles, his cold flesh was stiff and reluctant to bend or move.

_Guess that answers the rigor mortis question._

Given as the butler was a good six feet tall (or more, s'not like I had a meter stick with me), we had to do some interesting maneuvering to get him onto the stretcher, too, maneuvering which was made no less awkward on my part because I knew that, whatever his _physical_ appearance, Sebastian was perfectly conscious the entire time. As I was discovering, human bodies were an awkward burden, and the butler was correspondingly heavy to his extreme height, so there was a certain amount of hissed back-and-forth between me and Mey-rin before we got him onto the canvas cloth.

"No, no, this way!"

"Wait no-"

"Yeah, uh-huh, _no_ , move him like-"

"NO! Don't do that!"

"But his head-"

"He'll be fine, yes he will!"

"Uh, no, scoot him down, I'm not gonna-"

"Ooh, but he's heavy, he is!"

"No _shit."_

_"Miss Arya!"_

"Yeah yeah, sorry for my language, _look_ , can we just-"

"No no no, not like that! He'll tip right over when we pick him up!"

"For fuck's sake!"

"Miss Arya, _please!"_

At last, Sebastian was laid out on the stretcher, with both of us slightly red in the face and with our tempers somewhat frayed. Finny and Bardroy had finished easily, carrying the portly corpse of von Siemens, and I picked up my lantern and jammed the handle onto the end of one of the poles on my side with ill grace as Mey-rin wiped her forehead. We both grabbed the end of the poles and stood, me standing slightly farther away to do so than Mey-rin, as a good six inches or so of Sebastian's feet and calves stuck out on my side –part of the reasons for our disagreements. If we had arranged him in a more middling way, his head and neck would have stuck out at Mey-rin's side, and I felt slightly anxious about what the butler would do to us later if he were carried in such an uncomfortable and undignified pose through the manor halls. _Probably_ nothing, since physical discomfort seemed to mean little to the demonic butler, if it even affected him at all, but when it came to Sebastian, I always felt that I would be better safe than sorry.

Mey-rin leading and walking backwards, we followed Finny and Bardroy back up to the servants' level, then the regular part of the manor, negotiating the many staircases with some awkward fumbling, minor sweating, and a lot more muttered curses…on my part, at least. I had a feeling Bardroy was doing the same, just more quietly –though I could hardly be blamed, that one time Mey-rin missed a step and Sebastian's "corpse" nearly slipped and fell to the ground in a (for me) heart-stopping moment of panic.

To complete the eerie mood as we carried the two corpses through the gloomy Victorian halls, lightning flashed and forked outside the rain-streaked windows, accompanying near-defeating booms and rolls of thunder as the fresh storm spent its fury almost directly above our heads. I didn't smell the sickly-sweet aroma of rotting flesh, up here or in the more confined quarters of the basement, so at least we were spared that much, but the horror-esque atmosphere hardly lacked for anything at this moment. The only thing missing was a veil-shrouded ghost lunging out at us from out of the shadows…thank you, Mey-rin, by the way, for the horrifying images implanted in my head this morning.

After some discussion, we decided that we should lay them out in order of death, and after putting Georg von Siemens in the first room and Sebastian in the last, we went back down for Phelps. Mey-rin and I grabbed the three sheets that had shielded the corpses from view, leaving the men to carry the last body as we hurried upstairs to properly hide the first two from immediate view, and then Phelps as they brought him up, as was "decent".

By that point I was running on less than fumes. Barely four hours of sleep, interrupted by a demonic asshole knocking on our door, and then several moments of stress piqued by heavy manual labor, vís-a-vís carting a very heavy and awkwardly-shaped dead body up six flights of stairs, and it was a miracle that I was only dragging my feet as I wobbled back to the drawing room with the other servants.

"Young master, we're done relocating the bodies." Bardroy said as he popped his head in through the door, and Sebastian/Jeremy turned away from his conversation with Ciel and Arthur Conan Doyle. I didn't even have the energy to react to the reactionary prickle of freaked-out unease that came from seeing someone whom, to all intents and purposes, had been the corpse that I'd just carried on a stretcher for a good ten minutes standing hale and hearty in the room before me.

"Right then!" the false vicar said with a sharp, short clap of his hands. "Shall we take a closer look at the corpses in the order they were murdered?"

"So it is to be Lord Siemens first, yes?" Doyle asked him as I wobbled over to the two horsehair couches, snatching the fat, fluffy pillow that Lau had been provided with earlier out from beside him as Earl Grey leapt up from my old place on the couch, holding up his black-gloved hand as though volunteering in a classroom.

"I'm coming with you tooooo~!" he sang as I promptly curled up on the place he had vacated and stuffed the pillow against the arm of the couch, pointedly turning my back to the innocently smiling Lau at the other end.

"Wake m' up if somethin' important happens." I slurred to Mey-rin, who was hovering in concern, before leaning most of my body against the arm and snuggling my head into the puffy velvet cushion, enjoying the leftover warmth of Earl Grey's body that had been miraculously left over on the cushions and letting the drumming of the rain and the slow, repetitive _boom_ of thunder lull me to sleep.

_***Time Skip***_

"-iss. Miss Arya?"

"Nngphfsm?"

Someone was shaking me, a warm hand gripping my shoulder through the silk dress, and I grunted as my mind slowly dragged itself awake, like my consciousness was struggling out of thick, sticky treacle on the way. Every muscle in my neck, back, and arms felt stiff. My legs, curled underneath me on the couch (I suspected either Irene or Mey-rin of modestly tucking them under my slightly grimy red skirt, since they hadn't been in that position when I fell asleep) were cramped and tingling, and my body was heavy, my mind groggy, in the fashion that meant I _still_ hadn't gotten decent sleep.

As my heavy eyelids slid open, I saw that the room was slightly darker than before, with candle flames flickering out of my one of sight, and Mey-rin's anxious face hovered before mine. "Wha's happ'ned?"

"It's dinner time, yes it is, miss." she said in a low voice, oddly like a mother speaking to her child, as I drowsily sat up, my jaw stretching in a yawn so huge I felt the hinge of bone there pop.

_Ouch._

Blinking sleepily at the drawing room and the rest of the group contained therein –Bardroy, Finny, and Tanaka were absent– I saw Grimsby sweeping up the cards he had mentioned bringing down way back…er, earlier today, from the table between the two couches and stuffy armchairs. (This hellish sleep schedule was skewing my perception of time rather drastically.) From what I could see, only he, Irene, Woodley, and Lau had been playing, probably because Doyle and Earl Grey and Ciel had been investigating corpses all afternoon with Sebastian/Jeremy.

"M'kay." I yawned, unfolding my legs and standing up shakily as the pins-and-needles sensation of stifled blood flow prickled down along them. With a pat to my braided hair, making sure loose strands weren't falling everywhere after my long sleep (they weren't), I followed the other party guests as Mey-rin moved to usher them out towards the dining room.

The rain was as constant and heavy as ever, streaming down every dark glass windowpane we passed as Mey-rin's branched candlestick bobbed and glowed at the head of the group, but even I could tell that the storm was slacking; no forks of blue-white lightning illuminated the wind-swept landscape outside the manor, and the rumbles of thunder were faint and far-off.

_About damn time, too. I swear, if **one** more ominous statement is punctuated by a blast of thunder or a streak of lightning…_

The dining room itself was better lit than the manor hallways we had traveled through, thankfully, and the increase in illumination brought by the bright warm candlelight boosted my spirits and helped me perk up, if only a little. The funny slept-too-long-taste was covering my tongue, and the thought of food, even if it was the typical Sebastian-made delicious food, made me feel just slightly nauseous. I was still groggy and motivated to do little but sleep even more –I missed being a middle schooler, when I could stay up all night and be perfectly fine the next morning _and_ the whole rest of the following day.

_Aging is a bitch._

I still retained enough coherence, luckily, to copy everyone else as we were seated and the first course brought out. Like the fanciest of fancy movies (and childhood imitations) I had seen, we tucked the long white napkins into our collars, and I eyeballed Irene, sitting two seats down from me, to make sure I didn't do anything inexcuseable with my knife and fork. I ran the old mantra through my head – _work from the outside in_ – but that advice was less than helpful when there were only a knife and fork each, and the Victorians _still_ had some arcane methods of cutlery communication that I had yet to master.

Whatever we were eating was some kind of beef patty, sort of like a hamburger, with a ever-so-slightly tangy sauce that kinda reminded me of mustard, but was less sharp and more savory. It was pretty good, and I ate mine without compunctions –and then covertly watched the others as they subtly arranged their knives and forks in certain patterns on their plates, which somehow signaled in some mysterious way their desire for more or their satisfaction with the meal they had. Given as the patty had aroused my appetite despite the fact that, initially, I felt as though I couldn't choke down a single bite, I looked around surreptitiously and then tentatively copied an eager Earl Grey, placing my knife horizontally across my empty plate and then arranging my fork vertically on top of it, forming a sort of abbreviated-cross or a quartered plus sign.

Like magic, Tanaka suddenly appeared at my elbow, switching out my plate for another one, and I blinked as he laid my utensils down again, then shrugged and continued to dig in. Copying the others, I did not cut long strips and then just bite them down to size, but painstakingly cut one single mouthful's worth after another, nor more and no less than what I could eat in one bite.

As a consequence, given that I was unused to eating in such small portions, everyone else finished ages before I did, even Earl Grey, who somehow miraculously blitzed his way through no less than thirty-five plates, which ended up stacked on either side of him like pillars of conquest.

"Ahh, I'm stuffed to the gills!" he sighed in satisfaction, rubbing his stomach. His knife and fork were both laid vertically on his last plate, side-by-side, which evidently signaled Tanaka that the earl was through. "That was so tasty! The Hamburg steak wasn't fatty, so I felt like I could just keep putting them away! As one might expect from the Phantomhive House, the meat in its kitchens is in a class by itself!"

"You do me a great honor with your kind words, Earl Grey." Ciel said modestly, looking away from his own plate as I caught sight of the other three servants grinning at each other from behind the cracked doorway.

"Well, now that our appetites have been appeased, wouldn't you say it's about time you stopped reading us and explained all of the facts of the case, vicar?" Lau asked lazily, pulling his napkin out for his high collar, and Earl Grey twitched slightly as he glared at the vicar.

"No need to be so hasty," Vicar Jeremy said, patting his mouth clean with his own napkin. "There is one small thing we must see to first." He looked at Ciel. "May I count on your collaboration, my lord?"

"…yes…" Ciel said warily as he lifted up his last forkful of steak, gazing upon the disguised butler as if not entirely certain of what he was about to ask. "What is it you need me to do?"

Sebastian/Jeremy hooded his eyes. "Then, Earl Phantomhive…if you would please remove you clothes." he said in his rich, plummy voice, and Ciel's forkful of steak fell onto his plate, the abrupt silence so utter that even I, two seats down, could hear the quiet _plop_ as the meat fell onto the porcelain.

"WHAAAAT!?"

_So much for pathos._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 7.38 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 24th, 2019, 11.36 AM USA Central Time


	34. That Butler, Finale

_Arya's POV:_

_"I am certain the culprit will come to the earl's bedroom once again tonight, and there, we shall take him by surprise and capture him. Fear not, all will be well. The villain is sure to appear…however, as we cannot say from **whence** he will come, please be on your guard."_

Those were the words Sebastian/Jeremy left us all with before he took Takana, Arthur Conan Doyle, Earl Grey, and Ran-Mao –wearing one of Ciel's suits– off to Ciel's bedroom. Ciel, muffled from head to toe in a long draping black button-up coat that I was more than fairly certain belonged to Sebastian, sat huddled on the bed in Woodley's borrowed room. Mey-rin, Finny, and Bardroy all stood close guard over him with a several brooms and a fireplace instrument respectively, something long like a poker but forked at the ends like a stereotypical devil's pitchfork. Lau hovered by the rain-lashed window, looking chipper and oddly barren without Ran-Mao's usual presence by his side. Irene and Grimsby stood off to one side, away from the door, and Woodley paced nearby the fireplace, his fists clenched.

I, remembering _The Adventure of the Speckled Band_ , stayed away from the lacy-bronze-covered vent and, after some aimless wandering about the room, sat down on the edge of the bed furthest away from Ciel, leaning my body against the headboard and trying to ignore the subtle ache in every muscle that came with me being awake for too long.

Time passed. For everyone else, I'm sure it was a tense wait, fraught with nervous energy and prickling dreadful anticipation, but I was too busy trying not to let my eyelids droop shut and fall asleep, and besides, I knew how this was going to end anyways. Ciel, similarly, seemed somewhat unperturbed at the frisson of anxiety in the room, though I think that was because even though the earl didn't know about Snake, he was calm because he had Sebastian-the-invincible-demon up his sleeve as an ace card.

Had I been more lively, I would have scribbled a bit in my journal (which I'd since retrieved from me and Mey-rin's room), since it was rapidly descending down into little more than a magic recipe/notebook –what would be officially known as a grimoire. Since it was _supposed_ to be my diary, I felt simultaneously slightly irked and relieved at the hostile takeover my magical notations had taken on the pages. I couldn't be too upset, since they were geared towards bringing me home, after all…

Still. Like so many prissy tweens before me, I had failed in my resolution to continue keeping a diary, which vexed me, made me feel lesser, somehow…probably because I felt that put me in subtle alignment with those acne-ridden dweebs.

Oh well.

Even as groggy and half-asleep as I was, I could've spent my time looking out the window for any magical beasties cavorting amidst the storm. I'd seen then before, when I was away from the manor; zephyrs swirling through the clouds in exuberant games of chase and tag, looking like nothing much at all until they wheeled and turned, sending out flashes of glowing flanks and scales, and more powerful magical creatures of storm and wind and rain churning and roiling within the clouds they generated. I even once _thought_ I saw a Chinese dragon, though what the hell it was doing near London was anyone's guess…unless maybe it was following its migratory people.

But none of them appeared near the Phantomhive Manor. No surprise, really, given what was in residence, and for once I wasn't taking about my dubiously strong magical signature. The thing that trailed after Ciel was nastier by a long shot than anything I could cook up, intentionally or otherwise.

But anyways.

Since lightning and thunder no longer crashed like a cavalcade of cannons overheard, the room was mostly quiet, with only the crackling and occasional snap of the fire in the hearth, the muted rush of the steady rain against the roof and windows, and the barely-there whispers of our movements and breathes.

It was quiet. (In another scenario, I might have said a little _too_ quiet.) Soft as the sounds of rain and fireplace where, they only occasionally managed to drown out the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock on the far wall, whose ornate bronze hands slowly but surely crept their way to midnight. A deadly silence seemed to have fallen over the inhabitants of the manor, and it's guests.

We waited.

And waited.

10 o'clock passed by. Then 11. The metallic clang from the clock on the far wall ringing the chimes of the hour succeeded in breaking me out of my dozing stupor each time, though with increasing difficulty. The duvet I was sitting on felt warm and fluffy, the bed seemed soft, and nothing was happening. Only the thought that, to the other party-goers, it would be inexcusably weird of me to snuggle up under it and go to sleep kept me from wrapping myself in the duvet's downy folds, silk dress and Victorian propriety be damned. After all, with the threat of ominous death and a murderer running rampant hanging over us all, it would be the height of stupidity to take a nap.

Not that there _was_ a threat of violent death hanging over any of us, but still. I was the only one who knew that. With a yawn, I slumped down a little more against the headboard and closed my heavy eyes.

_Stupid Victorian sleep schedule…_

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

**Tok tok tok.**

"Mmnhmm?"

I lifted my head up from the side of the headboard: my cheek ached, and my neck felt stiff, which told me a decent amount of time had passed. Muffling another yawn with my hand and twisting, I blinked in surprise to see that the hands on the clock had moved to point out that it was 3.49 in the morning, and that everyone was suddenly tensed up as there was a soft _chak_ of the door's lock coming undone. Tanaka's lined face peered through the gap, smiling politely under his mustache, a candelabra in one hand.

"Excuse me." he said, as casually as if he were waking up a guest in the morning, and not delivering the news of a potentially captured murder suspect to a bunch of hypernervous murder-mystery guests, whose eyes were all focused intently on his face. "We have succeeded in apprehending the culprit."

There was an almost audible lessening of personal tension, though the pressure in the room sharply increased as speculation started spinning. I scooted off the bed and brushed down the front of my dress, trying to ignore the grimy hemline (from carting a corpse up from the basement) and the smear of ash and soot on the right hip, from me wiping the fireplace residue off of my burned hand.

"I have informed their party that the young master and the other guests are hiding here in Mister Woodley's room, so they should be arriving presently." Tanaka was continuing, and Mey-rin, Finny, and Bardroy all let out varying "whew"s of relief. I merely tilted my head sharply from side to side, cricking my neck with a few crackles and pops, as leaning against the vertical wood for several hours had played hell with my vertebrae.

There was a minute or so of silence, before another series of soft knocks tapped against the door, before Doyle (somewhat ruining the polite impression), swept it open with a dramatically outstretched arm and a _click_ of the handle. Earl Grey was standing beside him, and raised a hand to leisurely point behind their shoulders. "We've taken the culprit into custody." the white-haired nobleman stated without expression, and Irene jerked back with a cry as a shadowy figure loomed in the doorway, stepping into the brighter-lit room to reveal…

…Sebastian/Jeremy, holding a grey-brown snake as thick as his arm and slightly longer, tied in a basic pretzel knot and hissing furiously. (I was torn between curiosity on just how the _hell_ he'd managed to do that without breaking its spine, and sympathy for the poor snake regardless of how the butler had managed it.)

"Here is your killer." he announced, to the room's general astonishment. Some of the others gasped, and a few cried "A _snake!?"_ in rather shrill, squeamish tones. Me, my self-control having unfortunately been shriveled up by my mixture of sleep deprivation, misplaced adrenaline, and a wonky nap schedule, whooped and punched the air.

"I fucking _called_ it!"

Almost everyone turned to look at me then, with stares that ranged from appalled (most of the older men, and Mey-rin) to quietly amused (Lau). I turned almost as red as my dress and coughed, quickly lowering my arm and looking studiously at the ground, busily contemplating the pros and cons of diving out the nearest window and running off into the night. "I mean, er…"

"How is that even possible?" Bardroy grunted, mercifully directing attention away from me and back to the snake.

"It may be hard to believe, but it really did come after the young lady by virtue of her simply wearing the earl's clothes." Arthur Conan Doyle said, and Ran-Mao nodded from a short distance away (she was standing near the rain-lashed window, now), wearing one of Ciel's ruffled suit jackets, which had been unbuttoned almost halfway down to compensate for her larger…assets, and some form of bottoms (shorts maybe?) that barely came past her mid-thigh. I was cynically surprised that some of the men in here hadn't fainted from overexposure to oh-so-feminine _legs_.

"As weak as a snake's vision may be, it's sense of smell and hearing are highly evolved in compensation." Sebastian/Jeremy said, looking down at the snake in his hands as it squirmed and hissed. "Thus it can search out creatures in the black of night by their smell and the sound of their hearts. To put it plainly…the perpetuators must have trained the snake by rewarding it with prey whenever it was made to smell Earl Phantomhive's scent. If a snake is the murder weapon, keys and alibis no longer hold any weight."

The snake writhed and squirmed more, as if infuriated by the demon's voice.

"This is a black mamba, which inhabits Southern Africa. It's venom contains exceedingly potent neurotoxins. Those who receive its bite are sure to die within an hour. As for unique traits, it is the fastest land snake in the world and excels at climbing trees. A perfect snake for any assassination plot…but a snake is still just a snake, after all. It had no way of knowing whether or not it's victim was Earl Phantomhive."

"Now I get it…" Doyle gasped, scribbling rapidly in his little notebook. I could almost _feel_ it as _The Adventure of the Speckled Band_ began to be generated. "The earl not sleeping in his own room was an unexpected development for the one behind all this!"

Ciel looked down solemnly. "And that night, my bedroom was being used by Patrick Phelps."

Sebastian/Jeremy nodded, walking over to place the snake (still tied in a knot around its middle) inside a heavy ceramic vase/jar standing on the mantlepiece. "Surmising that it would definitely make another appearance once it got hungry again, we stuck around, and sure enough it did just that." He turned to look over at Ran-Mao, who was tugging on the extremely-loosened hemline of Ciel's jacket, muttering his discomfort at its tightness. "It was a relief that the lady was able to put on your clothes and willing to stand in for you, my lord."

"If that hadn't been the case, Lord Earl wouldn't have been able to dodge the awful snake, right? And if he'd gone and died on us, we would be in a right pinch!" Lau singsonged. "Isn't that so, Ran-Mao?" he asked as Ran-Mao toddled over to wrap her arms around the smaller earl and hug him close.

"You are safe. I am glad." she said tonelessly, and Ciel –who, due to their height difference, had the side of his face buried in her bounteous cleavage– spluttered and flailed.

"Wha! Hey! At least put on some trousers or something decent!" he squawked, wriggling desperately out of her grip with a gasp.

"Oh dear, he got away!" Lau hummed as Ran-Mao made a vague grasping motion towards where Ciel stood, pouting.

"Too bad…"

Ciel coughed ostentatiously into his fist. _"To get back to the subject at hand,"_ he growled. "-you had me wear the butler's coat to disguise my smell?" he asked with an irk mark throbbing on his head, and Sebastian/Jeremy smiled blandly.

"It was convenient, since it was able to hide all of what little there is of you." he said, and the singular tick mark on Ciel's head grew into a host.

 _"You are truly a man of too many words, vicar…"_ the earl ground out, and Doyle looked up from his notebook, gesturing with one hand.

"However, trading vessels are forbidden from importing poisonous snakes." he said. "Having worked as a ship's surgeon on an African route, I can tell you all cargo is thoroughly examined without exception."

Lau stroked his chin as Ran-Mao returned to her place at his side. "So that means it was snuggled in, hm?" he mused aloud. "The most efficient approach in that case would be to bribe a privately operated freighter, I'd say."

Ciel sighed. "Yes. But that would require close connections to businesses in Africa." he pointed out.

_Uh-oh._

"And when speaking of African imports, gold and diamonds come first to mind…" Doyle began, then gasped.

_Heeeere it comes._

There was a ponderous sort of pause as everyone turned to look at Woodley, who choked and lifted his hands, spreading his diamond-beringed fingers defensively. "Y-you've got it all wrong! It wasn't me!" he stammered, whirling to point at Lau. "If you want to talk trade, Kong-Rong is involved in it as well!"

"Nn, sorry~!" Lau trilled, shrugging. "We don't work with any African companies, see?"

"Still, assuming he's guilty just 'cos he deals with Africa is a bit brutal of us, don't you think?" Earl Grey shrugged, and Woodley latched onto his argument like a drowning man grabbing a plank of wood.

"H-he's right! And what about the time of Siemens's death!? I have an alibi!" he cried, as if he were somehow trying to equate innocence with volume.

"That alibi may not be much of one to begin with." Sebastian/Jeremy said.

"Eh!?"

"What do you mean?" Grimsby asked.

The disguised butler smirked. "What if the corpse the butler and his companions discovered was not a corpse at all?"

"WHAAA!?" Doyle gasped (indignantly, I thought), then shrunk down into a second-guessing pout. "But I could not detect a pulse, and his chest was bloody as well…"

"Did you make sure to verify his wounds?" Sebastian/Jeremy asked.

Doyle squirmed. "Well…I was unable to see that much in the dark, so…"

Sebastian/Jeremy turned to the rest of us. "Is everyone familiar with the potion Juliet drank in _Romeo and Juliet?"_ he asked, and unsurprisingly, Irene was the first to answer.

"The one which made her appear as though she were dead, only to revive later?" she answered in a half-clarifying, half-questioning sort of way, and Doyle gasped.

"No!"

"Oh, but yes." Sebastian/Jeremy refuted, pointing upright. "It does indeed exist…a poison that makes such a thing possible."

"Wha-" Woodley gasped (he was not alone in this) as Sebastian/Jeremy continued.

"There is a substance that has been recently discovered called tetrodotoxin. If it is purified in a certain way, one can enter a state of apparent death by consuming it, like the fair Juliet."

"Tetrodotoxin is a neurotoxin possessed by blowfish and octopi." Arthur Conan Doyle chipped in, apparently unable to resist the chance for trivia, and the faux vicar smirked.

"Ah, the Professor to the rescue once more. You seem to be up on the latest research, I see." he said. "I noticed a slight scent of the sea when I inspected Siemens's corpse. That was probably the result of the poison being distilled from blowfish venom." Sebastian/Jeremy pressed his fingertips together and spoke to the room once more. "Now, let me ask you this. Why would someone who was stabbed to death smell of poison?"

Ciel narrowed his eye. "So It was all a performance…"

"Yes. He drank the poison _himself_ and pretended to be dead after discarding the vial." Sebastian/Jeremy said. "That way, it would not matter to which room he was led. Someone with no medical knowledge would not want or think to examine a corpse's wounds, so it should have been enough to fool everyone."

Doyle closed his eyes in shame. "I ought to have inspected the corpse better." he sighed.

Sebastian/Jeremy smirked just a little as he made his next announcement. "But when I inspected the corpse, he had indeed died of stab wounds."

"Eh!?" Doyle gasped.

"He only intended to fake his death but ended up being murdered for real." Lau hummed as Ran-Mao snuggled up to his elbow again.

Doyle winced a little, looking at them, then frowned, glancing at Ciel meditatively. "Judging from the situation, the perpetrator might have attempted to frame the earl."

Ciel blinked, raising a languid eyebrow. "Me?"

Doyle nodded, "However, we do not know whether Lord Siemens was involved as well. He seemed to go wild under the influence of alcohol, so the perpetrator might have suggested it by saying _'Let's surprise everyone.'"_

The young earl reshuffled Sebastian's long, draping coat around himself. "This was the first time that he and I had met. He had no reason to frame me." he said. "He must have been used, then murdered to keep him from talking."

Doyle looked at the floor solemnly. "Poor man." he murmured.

Sebastian/Jeremy's confident smirk broadened. "The perpetuator would have had many opportunities to approach the lord at a dinner buffet."

"Then anybody could have cozied up to him!" Woodley bellowed, looking almost relieved at this second shred of hope that had come his way. "No one else would have a valid alibi either!"

The disguised vicar hummed, putting a contemplative hand to his chin. "I could ask each and every one of you about what you discussed with Siemens, but…"

His eyes raked the room, and I averted my gaze and hummed innocently as they came my way. I hadn't even talked with Siemens once the whole night, so as far as most of the people here went, I had one of the best alibis. (Even so, I wouldn't entirely put it past Sebastian to, somehow, put the blame on me.)

Finally, the disguised vicar sighed and shrugged calmly. "…I won't. Human beings lie."

Earl Grey narrowed his eyes. "Yes, you might be lying now too. If he ingested poison, where did the bottle go?"

Ciel gestured dismissively. "It's simple. You discard it where no one will think to look. Like in the fire."

I attempted to look even more innocent as a smug grin twitched at the corner of my mouth, struggling to be born. Suddenly, the pain of my seared palm felt rather validated.

_Plus, that means Irene is innocent. Oh well._

Bardroy rolled his cigarette around in his mouth, humming in surprise. "Now that I remember, there was a lotta firewood in the hearth then."

Doyle flipped rapidly through his notebook. "People wouldn't look for it there. You would only need to retrieve it once things had quieted down." he marveled aloud, and Ciel clicked his tongue.

"But everything did not go as planned…due to Sebastian."

Doyle gasped. "I see! The butler came to stoke the fire!" he shouted in realization, and Woodley staggered back.

"B-BULL!" he shouted frantically, becoming rather sweaty about the temples. Doyle narrowed his eyes; I had the sneaking suspicion that he was slightly enjoying this payback for the bruise on his cheek.

"Your alibi would be invalidated if proof of the staged death was found." he said deliberately. "You killed Sebastian out of haste, retrieved the evidence, and returned to your own room."

"Then whoever has it is the killer!" Woodley screamed, eyes bulging as he gestured wildly with one hand, like a cornered animal. "I have nothing of the sort in my possession! You've looked already!"

Ciel smirked in that way that he did; a thin, icy smirk, like frost on the ground at dawn. "Ah, yes. We have looked. But _not_ in the fireplace." he said silkily.

Woodley choked.

"It's the best place to hide something." Ciel continued. "It's not as if your room would be searched numerous times. You only need to retrieve what you hid there and discard it after the inspection."

"Th-these charges are all false." Woodley gasped, appealing desperately to Ciel one final time. "You won't find anything here!"

"Then prove it to us!" Grimsby barked, stepping forward. He shouldered Woodley aside and snatched the poker, scraping it noisily through the fireplace. Ashy smoke billowed out, making those nearest to the fireplace cough and choke. "Ah-!"

The smoke Grimsby stirred up slowly settled, revealing the twinkling shards of brown glass scattered across the carpet, coated in a dusting of ash and coal.

"WHAT!?" Woodley gasped

Doyle coughed as an eddy of smoke wafted his way, holding a hand to his mouth. "But I can't tell what these fragments once made up…" he wheezed as Sebastian/Jeremy knelt beside the hearth, beginning to pick up the tiny shards.

"You must simply collect them and use them to reconstruct the original shape." he murmured.

"Huh!?" the future author gasped. "That's impossible! Those pieces are minuscule!"

"It is but a puzzle without a picture." the demonic butler replied calmly, his white-gloved hand moving with precise care as he picked and resettled the tiny glass shards. "Mmm…here."

"Amazing!" Doyle gasped as Sebastian/Jeremy stood and turned with smooth balance, holding out his hand to show us a brown-amber glass…thing. My eyebrows furrowed as I looked at it and I resisted the "unladylike" urge to scratch my head: it was like a vial with a weird, thin, cone-shaped top connected to the vial by a sharply narrowed base underneath it.

_What in the name of fuck is that thing?_

None of the Victorians, however, seemed to share my confusion as there was an outpouring of gasps and small cries.

"It looks like an ampoule." the disguised butler said, peering at it, which answered my question (I think) neatly.

Note to self, look up ampoule later.

The air grew ominous as Doyle gasped, all eyes turning to Woodley. "This means…"

"It was you after all! You beast!" Grimsby roared, stepping protectively in front of Irene and jabbing his finger at the diamond merchant.

Woodley waved his hands frantically. "I-I don't know anything about this!" he begged, trying to gather the tattered shreds of his innocence about himself.

"You attempted to frame a child…why…?" Doyle murmured, shrinking in on himself as though appalled at the nastiness it took to do such a thing. If I didn't already know that Ciel was 1000% capable of murdering someone in cold blood, I suppose would be equally shocked.

"Diamonds." Ciel answered heavily, shaking his head and stepping forward. "There was a secret plan for the Roze Company, the largest in the diamond industry, and our company, which owns some of the world's leading technology, to enter the jewelry market together. However, Mister Roze, the autocratic president, was recently murdered, putting the plan temporarily in hold. Still, if the plan moves forward again, Woodley Company, which _claims_ to have the latest technologies, will suffer without a doubt."

He narrowed his eye in contempt. "So you planned to kill _me_ this time. What a shoddy plan it was."

"I did not do it. Believe me!" Woodley shouted, jabbing a finger at the eerily calm Ciel."I was framed! By him…by the Queen's Do-"

_" **Hold your tongue**."_

Earl Grey certainly deserved his title as the Queen's butler: he moved like a streak of lightning, so fast that Woodley barely had time to swallow his words before Grey was behind his back and Grey's long, razor-sharp rapier was laid with deceptive lightness across Woodley's throat.

"You don't need to make any excuses." he continued. "I will listen to you at leisure in prison."

"I-I didn't do it…" Woodley quavered, most of the fight going out of him as his powerful body began to tremble. "I swear I didn't-!"

Earl Grey growled and leaned forward, scraping his sword up to continue the threatening pressure as he did so, making Woodley _eep_. "Keep quiet if you don't want to die!" he snapped, scowling. "I'm as cross as a hungry bear right now."

"Earl Grey." Ciel stepped forward with a clink; he was holding the ridiculously long, chained handcuffs that I vaguely remembered having been used on him and Doyle after Siemens's murder. "I have _just the thing for you."_ he said, smirking. "Won't you put it to good use?"

The two earls exchanged slightly foul looks, before Earl Grey wrapped the chains around Woodley's torso and cuffed his hands behind his back, leading him out of the room with a drawn sword.

"Let us leave the rest to the Yard." Doyle commented, and Ciel nodded.

"With this, we can consider the case closed." he agreed.

"What a relief…" Irene sighed, leaning against Grimsby's shoulder as he smiled at her.

"Yeah."

"Oh, yeah! So what was that dark red liquid in the end, I wonder?" Finny wondered loudly, tapping a finger against his cheek.

"F-Finny!" Mey-rin squealed, waving her hands frantically. "Just leave that alone now!"

"Ah, yes." Sebastian/Jeremy hummed, smacking his first into his open palm. "I hadn't explained that to you yet."

Ciel squinted. "A dark red liquid?"

The faux vicar began to fish in his pocket. "The maid discovered a bottle of deep red liquid in Miss Irene's room. And she wondered if the ever-youthful and lovely Miss Irene, who does not appear to have aged a day, was a vampire."

Grimsby straightened as if a iron rod had been rammed down his spine. "What in blazes!? So you were doubting Irene all along?!" he roared. Irene tugged plaintively on his shoulder.

"Grimsby! Please wait, that's…"

Sebastian/Jeremy pulled a teardrop-shaped, serrated leaf from his pocket that was a dull reddish-purple color, like wine. "It's this, isn't it?"

"A leaf?" Mey-rin blinked.

Finny perked up. "Ah! That's red perilla!" he gasped in recognition.

The disguised butler replaced the leaf. "Red perilla is a known anti-aging substance. The extract that is produced from boiling it down is what keeps you looking so young, no?" he asked, and Irene blushed, cupping her cheeks.

"I do apologize. I would never have imagined that the bottle would cause such a great fuss." she flustered, then smiled and took Grimsby's arm. "I drink it because I want to stay young with him forever."

The theater director blushed now, too. "Irene…"

"T-that was it?" the three servants groaned, looking abashed.

Sebastian/Jeremy reached into a different pocket and pulled out a large flat glass jar filled with the same substance as Irene's. "It is said to help one recover from fatigue as well. I tried my hand at making some myself." He swirled the bottle a little. "So! What do you say we toast with a draught in celebration of closing the case?"

Everyone chimed their agreement. Candles were lit in the dining room again, glasses fetched, and the Yard confirmed to be on their way with a prison carriage. Sebastian/Jeremy poured for us all, while a flustered Mey-rin bowed and apologized repeatedly to a smiling Irene. I took one as they were passed around, sniffing at the dark red liquid before taking a cautious sip.

 _On second thought, I probably should've waited to do this until after everyone made the toast. Oh well._ I thought as I rolled the liquid around my tongue, wrinkling my nose a little. I recognized the vague taste of aniseed and fennel from, amongst other things, the thousand-and-three list of magical herbs that Britain had previously made me memorize by taste, touch, sight, and smell. Overall the taste combined itself into a sort of fruity, liquified-licorice sort of taste that wasn't entirely unpleasant, but definitely wasn't going to end up my first choice of poison.

_No wonder they say everything good for you tastes nasty._

Ciel, glass in hand, turned to Arthur Conan Doyle. "Well, Professor, the toast, if you please."

"Eh! Me?!" he squeaked, and Ciel smiled with deceptive innocence.

"You must be commended for your distinguished service." he said calmly.

Doyle squirmed and flushed, clearing his throat. "W-well then. Let us celebrate the end of the case!"

I lifted my glass along with everyone else.

"Cheers!"

* * *

_Thus the storm cleared itself away, and the spider's web unwound itself, like a spindle of death spun smoking in reverse. The ensnared flies flitted away to the song of birds and the gleam of sunshine, the specter of death dispelling into shreds of mist and ash as the shadowy monster clawed itself into prominence once again…_

__

_Wait, hang on a sec._

__

_Didn't Sebastian have a funeral after everything's all over?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 7.51 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 26th, 2019, 11.36 AM USA Central Time


	35. That Butler, Rebirth

_Arya's POV:_

In a direct contrast to the bright, sunny sky, a wind, cold and raw and brisk, gusted across the damp grass, sending it rustling and making the flowers everywhere tumble and dance. It pulled at the skirts and veils of the women and yanked at the coattails of the men and boys, and had anyone been wearing a hat without a hatpin, it would've been snatched away upon the instant. The contrast between the bright green grass, the sugar-white marble, and the inky black garments that swathed all of the guests was rather pretty, I supposed, in a sort of morbid way.

Even if the stupid black veil _did_ cast a dark mist across my vision.

I swore under my breath as the wind flirted and teased with it, yanking the filmy obstruction up, tugging it sideways, and plastering it across my face at random intervals. The veil itself really wasn't so bad, or the hat it was attached to, or the very Gothic-heroine-esque mourning gown Nina had whipped up for me. (Actually, it was all kinda cool. I was definitely reusing it for Halloween later.) The wind, though, was _definitely_ a pain in the petunias, and made the rest of my ensemble something of an irritation to bear with.

At least I wasn't also carrying the coffin.

No, I was at the back of the group with Lizzie, Mey-rin, and Soma, watching Agni and Undertaker and Bardroy and Finny shoulder the long, broad coffin that held Sebastian's "mortal" remains. Huddling into the heavy velvet fabric of my dress, I pulled it closer around myself, _willing_ the black fabric to do its thing and soak up the sunlight, converting it into warmth for the poor shivering body that it cocooned. While the sun may be shining, the air was still nearly cold enough for there to have been snow, and the wind wasn't helping.

_Dooong._

_Dooong._

_Dooong._

I glanced over my shoulder, frowning at the admittedly gorgeous church and its clangorous bell. (I'd brought my phone with and, rather guiltily, snuck a half-dozen photos already. The aesthetics of this church and its graveyard were _kickass_.) Glaring at the bell tower gave me an excuse to turn my face away from the others, which I was only too glad to do; I couldn't really fake tears as well as I might have hoped, and my only option was to screw my face up and hope that everyone though I'd cried so much that I didn't have any tears left to shed.

It did feel a little wrong to be so…duplicitous around the people that I admittedly was beginning to consider my friends. Mey-rin might not always be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she was earnest and good-hearted and fundamentally supportive. One couldn't help but become intimately close with the person you shared tight-quartered living space with, and no, I wasn't talking about the _yuri_ variety of intimacy. Essentially, being packed together in a very small space with all your personal accoutrements meant that you either had to get along or die.

I did not have the luxury of becoming irritated at Mey-rin's insistence on hogging the nightstand or keeping an ever-so-slightly creepy collection of Sebastian's cast-off brick-a-brac –a dirt-soiled glove he'd discarded, a scrap of an old order invoice for kitchen supplies in his handwriting, the tar brush he had used to show her how to properly black a fireplace, and other such mementos– in the drawer of our bureau because that would open myself up for criticism of my morning contortions and the weird box of "art supplies" in the right-hand corner of my own drawer that Mey-rin was Under No Circumstances Allowed To Touch. We had equal ammo on each other, and, like in the Cold War, we had enough firepower that a commencement of hostilities would end up blowing our world inside-out. (In the form of Sebastian chewing us out, in all probability.) Neutrality was a better and safer course, and overcompensating in that endeavor led to a wary friendship on both sides.

Bard, I respected for his ability to generate explosions and our fellow American-ness. Every so often we'd fall in together, doing something –me attempting to ride Daemon as he strolled by having a smoke, him doing something long and laborious in the kitchen as I scribbled in my book– and shoot the breeze for a little bit, casually, and only very occasionally would something in our general vicinity get blown up. My favorite time was once where he'd playfully lobbed a hot coal from the stove over by my journal, unaware of the spellwork I was doing, and nearly summoned an afrit as a plume of lilac flames shot up from where it had landed in front of me. (It was only funny in retrospect: between the momentary surety of the fact we were about to get our asses cooked and the ensuing embarrassment and flustered explanation of _"it's totally some rock crystals and spices and whatever I was playing with, ahahaha,"_ the actual event itself had been somewhat mortifying.)

Finny I saw more at a distance, even if he was the most chipper and friendly out of the three, since his job was outdoors while mine was in and fraternization between different sexes nowadays meant _the stuffs_.

Amongst other things, I was also morbidly impressed at how quickly Nina had been able to whip up a mourning outfit for me, complete with a black veiled hat festooned with modest protrusions of black feathers and wire sprays of jet beads. My heavy dress was somberly lined at the cuffs, neckline, and completely ornamental buttoned partition down the front with a sort of wrinkled black silk, which I was given to understand was called crape and almost exclusively used for mourning, as it wouldn't hold any sort of decorations whatsoever without falling out. To my mild surprise, I'd also gotten a studded pair of black earrings and a matching paneled black necklace with the outfit in a small pasteboard box, the latter of which I was wearing now, since my ears weren't yet pierced. I'd asked Mey-rin about it rather nervously, but apparently jet was a very common and in fact just about the only jewelry one wore for this kind of thing, and also being a rather cheap gemstone aside, since it was basically just petrified coal.

But Nina had gotten this whole ensemble out with less than a week's worth of warning, which was somewhat disturbing, especially when one considered that someone who worked on Saville Row probably didn't use the new-fangled sewing machines coming out on the market.

Uh, but anyways.

I amused myself by looking at the headstones lining the broad thoroughfare, trying to pick out the meaning behind the Latin phrases, failing, and scanning for anything interesting I might find otherwise. Sebastian, being a "mere" servant, didn't get much of a fancy headstone: the ubiquitous white rock, plain arched shape, and a small brass bell dangling on the left-hand side. His inscription was equally plain, though I had to cough into my draping black sleeve to muffle a laugh at the latter portion of it.

* * *

_To the Memory of Sebastian Michaelis  
Died March 1889_

__

_May you be in Heaven an hour before the Devil knows you're dead._

* * *

_Did Ciel pick that?_ I thought as I smirked into the black velvet, glancing at the languidly calm earl as he watched the coffin be lowered into the ground, knowing his… _unique_ , sense of humor. _I bet Ciel picked that. Hah!_

There wasn't a priest, just us mourners (I was slightly disappointed about that, if only to see if it might've affected Sebastian in the negative), so there were no last rites, just a dump and a burial, with Undertaker using a long shovel for the purpose. After it was done, we put down white mourning lilies on the freshly-packed earth, and the ceremonies, such as they were, were finished.

There was a long silence as we stared at the grave, before Lizzie's bottom lip quivered and she threw herself at her fiancé.

"Ciel!" she sobbed, ignoring his grunt of shock. "Sebastian is such a liar! He vowed he would never leave your side! How could he do this!?"

Soma, who was surprisingly well-versed in English mourning rituals and even had a jet-strung black cameo for his turban, lunged in on Ciel's other side and embraced him as well. "Don't cry, Ciel!" he wept, clinging to the bemused earl. "'Cause we'll always be together, okay!?"

"Forever and ever!" Lizzie added, and that broke everyone (minus Ciel and me) up as tears started streaming down Finny, Mey-rin, and Agni's cheeks, and Bardroy turned his face away so that his eyes were in shadow.

Clutched between Soma and Lizzie, Ciel smiled and gravely lowered his head. "Both he and I are truly fortunate to have people who care for us so much." he murmured. "Come, let us return to the house."

 _Finally_ , I thought ungraciously as we turned to leave and my veil plastered itself across my face again, Bardroy putting an arm around the sniffling Finny.

_Ding-ding-ding._

_Ding-ding-ding._

_Ding-ding-ding._

Finny turned to look as I glanced over my shoulder. The little graveside bell was chiming merrily, the clapper extending from a hollow groove in the headstone itself twitching to sound the tones. The young gardener scratched his head. "The bell on the headstone is ringing…without even a breeze?" he puzzled to himself, and Undertaker gave a wheezy, cracked giggle, holding his long-nailed fingers to his mouth.

"Oh dear, oh dear. Is this really any time to be cooling your heels?" he asked as more of the others turned around. "That bell ringing, why, it means he's still alive!"

There was a full choral range of gasps, before Finny threw himself at the grave like a madman, with Bardroy not far behind. "Dig it up!"

The Undertaker snickered some more, trundling over with his shovel as Bardroy and Finny began throwing aside handfuls of dirt frantically, while Agni –another borrowed shovel in tow– rushed to their aid. With four strong bodies working on it, the freshly-turned soil was excavated quickly and the slightly grungier lacquered coffin brought up, pulled to the left side of the grave. There was a universal holding of breath as Undertaker knelt by the side closest to the grave and pulled off the heavy lid.

I pouted (I could get away with it now, no one was looking _anywhere_ but the coffin) as Sebastian sat up, rubbing the back of his head fretfully from amongst the scattering of white lilies that had been tucked into his bier. "Goodness. I finally managed to get out of that." he sighed. "Everyone- ah."

This short exclamation was torn from him by the combined sight of Lizzie, Mey-rin, Finny, and Bardroy sailing through the air towards him, arms outstretched. A short, equally crisp series of _thuds_ heralded their impact as the demonic butler was slammed back down into his coffin and entwined with a veritable octopus-like horde of clinging limbs.

"You goose, I thought for sure I'd lost another comrade again!" Bardroy shouted with no real heat as Lizzie sobbed wordlessly next to him.

"Misder Sebasdan, I'b zo glad to see youuuuu!" Mey-rin echoed through her running nose, while Finny just choked on the beginnings of a sentence as grief poured out him like a cracked vase.

"I-! I-!"

"Everyone, please calm yourselves." Sebastian grumbled, sitting up a little and rubbing the bruise now squarely set on his forehead, ignoring their sobs.

"Glad we went with the safety coffin." Undertaker commented calmly, leaning against the headstone with an equally-blasé Ciel. "First time I've ever seen it ring, though."

"Yeah, tell me about it." Ciel smiled mechanically. Agni, kneeling at the rumpled graveside, pressed his hands together and lifted a teary gaze to the heavens.

"This is a miracle! O gods! I thank you!"

I sighed and made a mental note to double-check the trail of our departure, being as everyone else was going to be far too frazzled to keep an eye on our various belongings on the way out.

_***Time Skip***_

Things returned to normal…shockingly fast after the events of the Murder Arc. Finny, Mey-rin, and Bardroy all blithely accepted Sebastian and Ciel's halfhearted excuse that Sebastian hadn't been _quite_ dead, despite the iron through his chest, and some first aid and vague miracle-esque luck had brought him back to us alive and largely unharmed. I had looked the other way and whistled innocently when Sebastian eyeballed me after giving said excuse, and tacitly avoided even the _thought_ of what I knew to be his very obvious reason for not being dead.

And so here we were again in the kitchen with Sebastian presiding over all, the wounds in his chest and skull having theoretically healed enough for him to return to work.

"That will be all by way of instructions for today, but I have one final announcement." Sebastian said smoothly as he flipped a sheet of paper over on the pad. "There will be a new servant joining us at the manor."

"Eh?!" said the troublesome trio in unison, while I perked up. I knew immediately who it was, of course, being as he was one of my favorite characters and this was an easily remembered point in the plot.

_Sometimes this whole alternate-world-with-impending-death-and-doom-at-every-turn thing is almost worth it!_

"Come in." Sebastian said as he turned towards the doorway, by way of response, and despite knowing it was going to happen, I _still_ jumped along with the others as a dozen or so snakes suddenly slithered into the room through the cracked door.

"Gyaaah!" Mey-rin shrieked, making tracks for the nearest corner.

"Woah!" Finny gasped, standing quite still as the tide of scaled serpents swirled past him.

"EEEK! SNAKES!" Bardroy yelped, bolting behind Finny in a very uncharacteristic show of fear.

I just stood there, much like Finny, though I gulped and took a half step away as what looked like some kind of constrictor slowly slithered past my left foot.

"Do pipe down." Sebastian sighed, an exasperated look on his inhumanly perfect face. "They will not bite unless he commands them to do so."

"He?" Bardroy inquired from where he was huddled, shaking, behind Finny.

Snake, now dressed smartly in a livery suit and white serving gloves similar to Sebastian's, shyly peeked around the doorframe. Another snake was coiled around his shoulders, and a latecomer slithered past his heels. The other three servants didn't really notice him as Sebastian strode forward, Mey-rin whimpering in the far corner as another snake gradually edged closer, and Finny busy exclaiming over the friendliness of the one that had crawled up his body to curl around his own shoulders as Bardroy yelped and jumped away.

"Stand up straight now!" Sebastian said firmly as he briskly smacked the center of Snake's back, making him instinctively jump to attention. "Introduce yourself in a loud and clear voice! Now that your are here, you must follow our below-stairs rules!"

"I-I'm Snake." he said after a slight gulp. "W-we look forward to working with you –says Oscar."

Finny tilted his head. "You're…Mister Oscar?"

"No! " Snake said, pointing to himself and then the snake on his shoulders as it gave a loud hiss. "This is Snake, and I'm Oscar –says Oscar." He began pointing at various snakes around the room. "That's Emily…and the one next to you is Bronte. And Wordsworth is over there. And the one by-"

"Alright, that will do." Sebastian interrupted, clapping his hands twice. "Let us leave the introduction of those servants for another time." He sighed as a beat of sweat ran down his jawline in classic anime fashion. "Else it will be night before we know it." he muttered to himself, then cleared his throat and looked at all of us again. "In any case, he is the Phantomhive footman as of today. Do try to work together, you lot."

Lifting my dress above my ankles, I carefully stepped over the seething horde of snakes –I still didn't remember who was who– to stop before Snake and extend my hand. "I'm Arya, Aryana Thompson." I told him brightly. "Manager for the fledgling US branch of Funtom Co."

Snake's scaled cheeks turned a little pink, and his green eyes slid away from mine as he dipped his head in an awkward little bob of acknowledgment, taking my hand and giving a very shy, tentative squeeze –almost like he hadn't really shaken hands with anyone who had taken him at face value before. Given his Tragic Backstory©, that was probably the likeliest case, and I felt a surge of not-quite-irrational irritation at characters who were literally less important than my toenail clippings –minor background losers for a (somewhat minor) character's backstory.

_Though how they could hurt such a cinnamon roll is quite literally beyond me._

"And I'm Finny!" the aforenamed gardener said brightly, bouncing up beside me and eagerly taking Snake's older hand as he flinched and flushed even darker.

"I'm Mey-rin, yes I am!" the maid said from behind our backs, and Bardroy gave a nervous, jerky little salute from where he was standing, trying to get as far away from the snakes as he could without being obvious about it.

" 'M Bardroy."

 _"Ahem."_ Sebastian cleared his throat loudly from the sidelines, and there was a flurry of movement as everyone got back to their stations and I let go of Snake's hand, stepping back to my usual-out-of-the-way station. Mey-rin and Finny immediately took to complimenting Snake's mad potato-peeling skills, while I started scribbling in my notebook, trying to summarize and condense the sigils I had found and learned about thus far. This served to pass us until lunchtime, where I snagged some cold sliced potatoes, an apple, and a flask of water to take with me out into the stables. I had to not-quite-fight Dämon for the apple, but managed to eat most of it before I had to hand the rest of the core to my balky horse or risk a hoof coming down on my foot.

Leaning against a saddle set on a railing, I ate the rest of my lunch and took a moment to silently contemplate life as the world went by. Despite the ever-increasing length of my hair, I was cold quite frequently nowadays; I think it had something to do with the fact that back home in Virginia, weather this cool would be accompanied by snow still caked on the ground, but in England whatever snowfall there had been was melted and green was showing all around, which subsequently made me misjudge quite often how many layers I should bundle on.

Also there were no microwaves, so casual food was impossible to heat up unless you stuck it on the stove or over a fire, and it was more than my life's worth to try and muscle in on the range while Sebastian was making his culinary magic. Ciel was _most_ protective over his cakes.

Dämon nudged me with his nose, whickering softly as he broke me out of my thoughts, and I glared and pressed an arm against my side protectively; it had taken just one incident of trying to scribble in my journal while here in the stables to learn that my benighted horse saw any plant-based material as yummy foodstuffs and therefor his rightful due, and I had lost an entire page of notes before half-falling half-jumping off the fence post I'd been sitting on and clutching said journal protectively to my chest.

"Don't even think about it, hotshot." I muttered under my breath, scratching between his ears with my other hand as Dämon continued nudging at the place where my notebook was pocketed, safely _inside_ my riding habit. He snorted and shook his mane, though whether that was disagreement or mane-settling was anyone's guess. My hopes was for the latter.

Lunch eaten, I saddled up and took my bruiser of a horse out on the trails: Dämon and I had gotten into enough of a balance of power that I could ride him across the horse trails on Ciel's estate without worrying if I was going to be launched into a tree, bucked off and trampled, or otherwise have to painfully drag myself back several miles to the estate and explain to Ciel the humiliating story of why and how I'd lost a valuable purebred horse on his own damn property.

This wasn't an _ideal_ form of exercise, of course –the muscle groups I used were very different from running, and technically speaking, Dämon did all the real work– but it _was_ still exercise: it took a certain amount of strength and skill to keep my seat on a fast-moving horse, especially when Daemon was from destrier bloodlines –the knight horses, bred to carry large men with heavy armor, and consequently big-boned, tall, and wide of back. Jamming said back between my thighs and knees meant I had to do some steady work of my own to keep myself in place, especially when the body of the horse beneath me rocked back and forth to his gait.

It wasn't perfect, but it also wasn't as if I was going to get permission from Ciel to light all the candles in his family ballroom and run laps, day after day after day, and I was chicken enough to not really want to do so in the dark, _especially_ when Sebastian might feel tempted to play a bloodcurdling but technically harmless prank on me. Again. I _still_ hadn't forgotten –or forgiven– that one night before the Circus Arc, when he snuck up on me in the library after I'd accidentally fallen asleep at my books and nearly given me a heart attack, thinking it was Oliver.

_Fucking psychopathic cannibalistic creep. Hope whatever world we kicked him to has the sort of monsters that'd kill him and the other 2p!s dead in a week._

I shook my head, trying to clear the bitter –and uneasy, since I was riding through a very old forest that could be _very_ spooky if I was in the mood– thoughts from my mind. It was a brisk, beautiful spring day, the air raw and cold in a way that made you feel glad to be alive, rich with the healthy growing scent of rain-wet plants and earth, I was (for once) wearing enough layers to comfortable, and I was riding on a fast, for-once cooperative horse, which meant I was flying along the first path, Daemon's hooves thudding on the damp ground as I was filled with the innate sense of power that came from being securely perched atop a tall, imposing beast that ran like magic along a country path.

For a little bit, life was good.

But good things come to an end and all that; Dämon had the speed, strength, and endurance of an expensive horse, but he was just a horse, not a motorized vehicle, and was therefor liable to getting tired. A good run every day kept his wind up, but pushing him more than that was just going to tire my stubborn grey steed to no good purpose, and I'd had horseman's ettiquete rammed into me since I was old enough to understand it.

So, despite how very annoying my cocky horse was, I turned him back at our usual point, and by the time we cantered into view of the mansion he was sweating just a little, though not heavily and, of course, not foaming. The ghosts of my dead ancestors would haunt me until the ends of the earth if I pushed a horse _that_ far during a mere daily run.

Midway along the stable path Dämon suddenly made the deeply disturbing, half-human guttural shrieking noise of a distressed horse and reared back; I wasn't prepared for that gesture specifically, at this moment, and thus overcompensated in my conditioned response to immediately adjust my weight the second he made an unexpected shift in stance, and as consequence the _very_ hard arch of Dämon's neck met my face as I snapped forward, my nose making an intimate acquaintance with the horse's spine as I let out a guttural shriek of my own.

"Ow-! Mother _fucker!"_ I swore viciously as I jerked my head away and hauled back and down at his reins, pulling Dämon's head down against his chest and thus forcing the grey steed to go down on all fours again, clapping a hand to my stinging nose as I kept up the pressure, making him shuffle clumsily backwards, still snorting and tossing his head in alarm. Whatever had freaked Dämon out was a threat from the front, and by backing him up I both eased my mount's instinctive panic, making him easier to balance on, and hopefully also took him out of the attacking range of whatever startled him to begin with. All things that contributed to my continued safe existence and stance on his back, since whatever freaked a horse was likely to be of equal threat to a human.

Then, perhaps not wisely, I leaned forward and peered around the side of his head, trying to see what panicked my annoyingly bouncy and determined horse to such an extent, since I didn't see any slavering wolves or feel the rumbles of an earthquake.

There was a snake coiled in the center of the path, hissing furiously up at this large interloper who had so dared to almost trample it.

I looked at the snake. Then I looked at Dämon, who was panting and snorting a little bit as he slowly calmed down.

"Dude," I said flatly. "You're literally like sixty times bigger than he is."

"Ah yes, but I am poisonous, and though my species is not native to England, horses have the instinct to recognize the danger –says Webster." a male voice came from out of my line of vision, and I glanced up, more than a little startled, to see Snake approaching slowly down the bridle path. His accent had become slightly more posh than it had when I first met him, and it suddenly dropped into a lighter, fluttery tone.

"This is all very well and good, but Sebastian has sent us to fetch you back for supper –Emily reminds us. Furthermore, you will need time to put that great big brute away before returning, she adds."

My nose was stinging, and I wrinkled it a little to try and ease the pain. "Sure thing, man." I said companionably, gingerly touching the bridge of my nose a few times before sighing and lowering my hand to grip the reins again. Then something occurred to me, and I frowned, my eyebrows furrowing. "Isn't it a bit early for that, though? I mean, I don't generally help him with the food preparations either, and Bardroy would be really jacked if I…" I trailed off as I noticed Snake was staring at me soundlessly, his yellowed eyes slowly growing huge. "What?"

"Your nose is bleeding –says Emily." he said, seemingly hypnotized, as he raised his hand and traced one finger back and forth under his own nose.

_Wait, what?_

I blinked, and realized the annoyingly slow dripping feeling above my upper lip was way too warm to be cold-weather mucus, and reached up again, squeaking in alarm as my fingers came away red. It'd been a while since my face was hit hard enough to break vessels in my nose –I must've forgotten the telltale sensations. One of which, oddly enough, was that an impact-nosebleed was nothing like the real thing, in the sense that I didn't actually smell the blood dripping from my nose, just feel and taste it as I, for lack of any tissues hanging about, slid my tongue out and swiped it as high as I could over my upper lip, cupping my slightly-bloodied hand over my nose as if that would do a blind bit of good.

"Uh, sorry." I mumbled between semi-effective licks, carefully swinging my leg over and dismounting my skittish horse, holding the reins firmly in my non-nose hand as I got both feet on the ground. "I wasn't really prepared for him to buck like that. Can you, um, can Webster move out of the way, please? I'm gonna walk Dämon back to the stables, and I can't do that if he's in the way."

"But of course –Webster replies gallantly." Snake said as his voice returned to the posher accent, and the brown-patterned snake on the ground hissed and slithered over to him. Snake bent down and let his little friend wind up his arms and around his shoulders before he straightened again, and –this to my surprise– as I took advantage of the herd mentality of horses and started forward, trusting that Dämon would trust me to signal danger first –albeit perhaps by falling victim to it before he did– Snake started walking with us, slightly ahead of my still-spooked horse (a wise call).

"Sebastian stated that he wanted to borrow a recipe from your book, and asks that you meet with him and Smile in Smile's office to discuss it –Donne says." Snake told me as his voice changed again, and I blinked, then swore nervously under my breath. There was only one book of mine that the demonic butler, and his master by extension, would have the faintest interest in –my journal/magic-copybook. I wondered frantically just what the hell I had done –aside from arranging in the death of a necromancer– that would give either of them a reason to obliquely call me in for a meeting.

"Uh…yay." I said awkwardly after a moment, reminded by Snake's level over-the-shoulder gaze that he was probably expecting a response. There was a pause, and for lack of anything else to do I started up another angle of conversation. "You enjoying your time at the manor so far?"

"It is very warm, so we are all liking it very much –says Emily." Snake replied in his more "feminine" voice, and added "And Snake is pleased that Smile is giving him a chance to find the circus members, too."

Behind him, I winced.

_Man, I hope by the time he finds out what really happened to the circus troupe he's gotten more understating about their moral stance._

"That's nice." I said with a smile hopefully more polite than awkward, even if he wasn't looking.

"As branch manager, what is it you actually do on the estate, asks Donne." Snake said curiously after a slight pause, and I gulped.

"I, uh, mostly do research now." I said, frantically using every ounce of lying-improv I had ever learned or acquire naturally to find a way to explain that I basically just scribbled in a notebook and rustled among the esoteric section of the library all day. "Lord Phantomhive has a number of projects he wants me to work on, so I mainly just rummage in the library all day."

Snake stopped dead.

I heel-stopped as well, and Dämon snorted in the vague direction of my hair as his hooves clopped down just behind my feet. "What?" I asked, mind racing again. What freaked him out about-

"A _library?!"_ Snake gasped, whirling around. His eyes were huge, slit pupils dilated, and the corners of his half-open mouth pulled up high –were this still an anime, I could tell the background behind him (and possibly his pupils) would be little dancing sparkles of excitement. "Where? How large is it? May any of the servants have entry? What are the contents? May we have access –Webster asks in joy!"

"Uh." I blinked at him. In retrospect, weren't most of his snakes named after writers or whatever…?

"Just lemme put my horse away, dude, and I'll ask Lord Phantomhive about it after our meeting or whatever it is."

_***Time Skip***_

Deciding that Ciel and Sebastian could just _deal_ with me being all horse-smelly and with my riding habit covered in stable detritus (loose bits of straw and grain hulls, dirt, dust, and horse slobber) if they wanted me urgently enough to have sent Snake out after me personally, I didn't bother to change or do more than whisk my fingers through my hair to neaten it in place of a comb as I tromped up to Ciel's office, having left Snake in the kitchen and still wondering desperately just what the hell I was being called in for. The Atlantic arc? No, that happened a while after Snake was accepted into the manor, and that weird Easter chapter wasn't, obviously, until Easter, so…

My mind blanked. I literally couldn't think of _anything_ , unless it was the necromancer, and in that case Ciel was probably more likely to praise me than anything. Most of my practices had been utterly basic, and something Sebastian could (and likely had) watch himself to determine their harmlessness.

I paused to knock loudly on the office door before I entered, having previously made the mistake of failing to do so and deeply regretting it forthwith.

"Enter." Ciel's voice came from the other side of the paneled wood, and I turned the handle and stepped inside. The pint-sized earl was securely ensconced behind his wide paper-strewn desk, and Sebastian stood rigidly on the carpet in front of it like a thin, black-clad gallows tree.

…or maybe the macabre implication was just me.

"You guys wanted to see me about my, uh, 'recipe book'?" I asked with a warily raised eyebrow, using air quotes on the last two words.

"Yes, indeed." Ciel replied languidly, and glanced towards Sebastian. The demonic butler needed no further prompting, and stepped forward one long-legged stride briskly.

"Care to explain this?" Sebastian asked, holding up one hand –and in it, like he was lifting an ace card in a game for my inspection, was my magic journal/notebook.

"Wha-" My hand flew to the pocket of my riding habit, and a chill slid down my spine as I felt it empty. _How the hell –okay, he's a demon, but **still**. That's unsettling as **fuck** , to take it from me without me seeing him move or feeling him touch me at all._

"You _stole_ my notebook?!" I gasped, staring at the black-bound book in the demon's hand, and Sebastian smirked a little bit at me as he continued to hold it motionlessly aloft, though it was Ciel who spoke.

"On the contrary, Miss Thompson. You are my employee, and employed for your magical ability, therefore any records you make under my employ constitute as _my_ business, and therefor my property." the young earl said calmly, a smug curl to his lips the only mar in an otherwise implacable poker face. "One can say I merely took this opportunity to review your accounts."

_Oh, so they also stole it before now too. How reassuring._

"In summation," Sebastian began promptly, lowering the book a little, opening it, and beginning to page through _my_ journal casually as I seethed in silence. "-most of these records seem to be split between personal entries and magical theorem, classifications of supernatural entities, and has heavy emphasis on notations on and rituals of singularity-based modifiers designed towards the ultimate purpose of destination elimination: that is, teleportation magic. This is nothing untoward, _but_ , lo and behold, as we come to the end-"

I was going to punch him, I was going to _punch_ him for the facetiously surprised tone of voice Sebastian was putting on as he flipped the opened book around and held it out to me, two fingers keeping his spot and holding it in place as he showed me the pages and dropped the false shock in his tone. "-we find notes on the magic and modifiers needed for the ritual to summon an undine. I do believe this has nothing to do with your self-appointed task, Miss Thompson?"

 _I do believe you need to go stick your head in a bucket of holy water._ I thought viciously as I glared into the demon's eyes, hating every perfect, polished inch of him. His subtle smirk widened, as if hearing my thoughts and enjoying the futility of them. I had to take a few seconds to calm down, remind myself that Sebastian and Ciel weren't _that_ paranoid, so as to pounce on my every little deviation from a vague schedule, and that they were probably putting the lean on me so hard to both intimidate and remind me that, if I _actually_ went off-rails, this was only a taste of the sort of vengeance they could and would enact upon me. Sort of like pointing at a guillotine standing right outside my door with an obnoxious smirk to remind me it was, in fact, still there.

"It does _too_ have to do with getting me home." I said sourly, wondering what my chances of snatching the book out of Sebastian's outstretched hand would be and whether or not my own hands would still be attached after such a move. "A sh- a, a _ton_ of the magic books I need and the stuff I need to codify is in Latin, and I don't know Latin much more than a few errant words and sentences. Undines do, and they're powerful enough that I can just summon one and have it stick the language right in my head."

Sebastian and Ciel exchanged an inscrutable look, and to my infinite relief, Sebastian then closed the book smartly and handed it back to me without a word. I tried not to touch too much of him as I took it back and shoved it into the deepest pocket I could (again), relaxing just a tad as the palpable aura of danger passed and my…employer…clearly decided I was not, nor would be, a potential threat anytime soon.

"I thought as much. Still, though," Sebastian sighed wistfully, closing his eyes. "-humans are such lazy, wasteful creatures. Spending magic just to acquire a language any ordinary person could learn with enough patience and persistence –I truly don't understand you."

"Patience is for people with _time_." I shot back, my eyes flashing. "I ain't got none –I want to go _home_. And my magic is mine to waste." There was a pause, and I swallowed before continuing warily, eyes narrowed as they flicked between the duo that currently controlled my fate, such as it was. "You got anything _else_ to accuse me of before I leave?"

"Not currently, no." Ciel yawned, holding up one of the fountain pens on his desk and lazily inspecting it with a half-lidded eye. "Just see that your magic does not interfere with the rest of the servants' duties nor my own, nor cause any issues that we may have to deal with later. Understood?"

I glared at him as much as I dared, then sighed and shook off my animosity. "Understood," I groaned wearily. "Uh, and that reminds me –Snake and I were talking, and he really wants to poke around in your library. Apparently he loves books or something…can you, um, can he have permission to enter the library like me?"

Ciel and Sebastian exchanged another of those wordless glances –probably guesstimating how much an unexpected treat like that would cement Snake's loyalty.

"He may, so long as it does not interfere with _his_ duties. Make sure he doesn't see what you're doing, either." Ciel said at length, and I executed a short, terse, (probably incorrect) bow before turning on my heel and leaving the room.

I did indulge in a silent fistpump though, for Snake's sake, once I was outside the closed doors of the office.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 8.06 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 27th, 2019, 10.18 AM USA Central Time


	36. That Butler, Summons

_Arya's POV:_

Privacy? Check –Ciel had opened up this bare, disused room for me and me specifically, and none of the other servants knew that I was here or that it was even a place I could go.

Pentacle? Also check –I had spent the last hour or so painstakingly drawing out the rainbow-looking thing and the ensuing spell-specific smaller runes on the smooth wooden floor.

Color? Checkadoo –I'd used green for the point representing Earth and North, yellow for the one representing East and Air, red for Fire and South, blue for Water and West, and plain white chalk to serve as the fifth Spirit point and the pentagram formed by the intersecting lines in the very center of the diagram.

Correct orientation? _Hopefully_ check –courtesy of the LED flashlight watch that also so happened to have a nifty compass built in, I had aligned the points in the right direction. Though, given as pentacles were five-pointed stars, it was impossible to _fully_ align one to the traditional cross-spoked layout of the compass, but according to my teacher and the textbooks here, that didn't matter as much as making sure the main points you cared about were clear –in my case, making sure to align the Water side completely and totally to the west, leaving the general purpose of the diagram hopefully mostly clear.

Candles? Yup yup and yup –I had short colored candles of each appropriate orientation in each appropriate place at the head of their specific points.

Receptacle? Full check there –Sebastian had dragged a tub I'd seen Bardroy peeling potatoes into before into the room, and I'd drawn my pentacle around it, after filling the darn thing with water and a hefty amount of salt, to mimic an undine' natural environment and hopefully make her more receptive to appearing to my summons and less inclined to bite my head off after she answered them –literally.

Tools? Chalice, cloak, notebook with the spell phonetics written down –all systems go.

I gulped and tugged the hood of my cloak a little farther down my face, hoping that I would not regret this next action of mine to any degree. _Well, soonest begun, soonest done._

Taking a deep breath, I squirmed my shoulders under the cloak to settle it a little more –I still didn't have the skill of my mentor Britain in getting the damn thing to lie the way it was supposed on my body. But, _having_ it was the most important thing –magical creatures usually had only a vague idea of human fashions, and the one thing universal across almost all cultures and nearly as many time periods was a hooded cape of some form. Wearing them had become something of an acknowledged uniform among magicians of Britain's world and time, and my experiences here had not led me to think it would hurt to continue the trend.

Especially with something as powerful as an undine, a patron elemental…if I put _that_ in a bad mood, I was in trouble.

Shaking my head, I jerked my thoughts back to the proper time and place, and scanned over the notebook one last time to solidify my words.

_Right, alright._

Closing the book and setting it down, I took a deep breath and cupped the body of the chalice with both hands. Formulating this spell had taken a lot of mental gymnastics and calculations, as I wanted to make it clear from the start that I was _not_ the sort of magician common in this universe, and _that_ meant deviating from the normal summoning invocation, and _that_ meant being very, very careful about how I worded things. Magic was more akin to math than anything else, and when things were in a formula, it was for a damn good reason –and twisting the formula meant twisting the rules, which could be very, _very_ dangerous.

 _"By the power of Water, of Femininity, of the Chalice that I hold, I humbly ask and invoke thee, Spirit of Water, any one of the many sisters Undine that speak the language of the bridge-building Romans, to answer to my call, and exchange a boon for a boon, favor for favor, upon which she shall be released, faithfully and unharmed. To this I do call, by the power held within me as_ magus." I intoned in carefully precise French, lifting the silver cup up to my eye level, then lowering it again, biting my lip in worry and anticipation.

There was a gust of wind in the room, slow but powerful, making the cloak billow at my heels and ripple at my hood, and the candle flames flickered, swayed, and went out. Well, of course they would, I thought nervously as I watched this –Water and Fire were opposites and enemies, after all. Though I couldn't be sure of it without some sort of measuring device, I _thought_ that the humidity in the room increased at the same time, and there was a definite scent of mist and dew in the air, and I swallowed thickly as the water in the tub rippled, as though disturbed by the wind or something moving inside, even though the air above the tub was still and anything that might disturb it, like me, was at least five feet away.

I shifted from foot to foot nervously, and the water exploded outward.

Stepping back with a yelp and clutching the chalice so hard my knuckles turned white, I watched as the geyser from the still surface of the tub swayed, miraculously staying together as one trunk –although small droplets pattered to the ground from its edges– as it writhed and bent like a waterspout gone mad. The geyser twisted upright, spindling and thinning in some places while widening in others, shrinking down into a more humanoid size as a cascade of foam spilled down its back, bouncing and curling like human hair.

I stared at the undine as she stared back, blinking a little as I took in her unique semblance. Though human in shape, there were a number of oddities about her that made it fairly clear this form was only a mimic –her eyes were green, sure, but only the iris, and the pupil and sclera were clear all the way through, and her "face" was translucent and ever-shifting, as small ripples from her subtle changes in expression disturbed its surface. Her body and arms were defined enough, sort've, but her legs, if she had them, blended in the mist cascading down her torso and merged with the water.

The book drew them differently, of course, but I was given to understand that physical appearance was a choice among undines, and that this one could just as easily look like a clown, or me (or both, heh), if she wanted.

 _"Thou hast called,_ magus. _I come."_ the undine said tersely in French far more eloquent than my own, glaring at me a little though her foam-flecked bangs, probably suspicious. Having answered my call, she had temporarily placed herself in a vulnerable position to me, and one that magicians from this world would only be too glad to take advantage of, regardless of politely-worded summons. I bowed a little, to properly set the tone.

 _"And you have my gratitude for coming."_ I answered as humbly as I knew how, sweating a little as I tried to hammer my language –on the fly– into the appropriately archaic and courteous form best suited for petitioning magical beings. _"I crave a boon, gracious sister. I require the language of the Romans of old, Latin, and am willing to trade the gift of knowledge from you with the gift of power wielded by me, bestowed upon you in the measure you choose to receive as appropriate payment for your service, upon which time I shall release you from the bond."_

In plain English, I'd just told her I wanted to learn Latin, and in return for her downloading the language into my brain, I would pay her back by coalescing the magic in this area into a form she could absorb and letting her drink in as much of said magical power as she deemed fit, before dismissing her.

The undine rippled –literally– in surprise, her face shimmering and roiling like a puddle in a rainstorm as the edges of her makeshift body quivered. _"Thou would ask, rather than command?"_

I inclined my head. _"And pay, rather than steal."_ I said politely. _"This I so swear, by the power held within me as_ magus."

The undine was silent for a moment, then suddenly swayed ominously forward, looming and curling forward in a thick column of water –far more water than had been in the tub. I swallowed hard, but didn't step back, my fingers clenching around the chalice again as her face hovered above my own, skin crawling and heart slamming against ribs as I almost _felt_ the ponderous weight of the water poised above me and ready to crash down at her slightest command.

 _"Swear by thy power as_ magus _that I come to no harm!"_ the undine hissed, a glimpse of sharp teeth swirling into vision around the area of her vaguely defined mouth.

I lifted my chin a little, trying to show some more spine than I had previously as I met her eyes, or at least, the place where she seemed to have them between currents of water and slips of attention. _"I swear."_ I said honestly.

_"Swear that thou shall ask this and naught else before my release."_

_"I swear."_

The column of water churned a little, swelling behind the flat area of her face like a cobra flaring its hood.

 _"Swear that thou shall pay the dues I ask before my release, and swear that thou wilt give me my release upon thine payment, favor for favor, boon for boon. Swear by thy power,_ magus!"

 _"I swear by my name, my life, and my power as_ magus _that I will pay your gift of the Latin language with the gift of magic power, favor for favor, boon for boon, and grant you release from the bond directly afterwards, gracious sister."_ I recited carefully, which, if I had not been perfectly willing to pay her honestly and not at all concerned with betrayal, would've been an extremely stupid move. There were rules of magic and then there were _rules_ , and if you swore an oath in the presence of magical workings, it gained a lot more spiritual heft than just a mere pinky-promise. By the standard way of things, to my no-uncertain knowledge, should I break the minor pact I had just sworn with the undine, I would have to forfeit everything I swore by –my magical power, my name, and also my _life_ , which is why including them in one's promises was probably not standard practice in this world, since magicians seemed to have a habit of double-crossing everything that crossed their path(s).

The undine studied me for a moment, then slowly swayed backwards, the churning sound of the water diminishing a little. One slender trunk that was probably meant to be an arm extended, an exquisitely-formed hand shaping itself for a brief moment to languidly indicate my chalice.

 _"Drink, then, from the Cup of Wisdom."_ the undine intoned sonorously, and I looked down to see a shimmering liquid in the chalice that most _definitely_ had not been there a few seconds ago. I wasn't quite sure _what_ the liquid was: it was too iridescent to be water and too transparent to be anything else. _Whatever_ was in the cup actually looked like clear, swirling oil more than anything I could think of, though I could only hope that it didn't _taste_ like that. (I mean, it was unlikely. Undines were guardians of water, and oil was a pollutant in their precious ocean. But still. That'd be a hell of a way to poison a hated magician.)

Hoping I was not about to regret it, I lifted the chalice and mutely toasted her, then put the cup to my lips and drank.

It…didn't really taste like anything, somewhat to my relief; no minerals or fluoride or anything that you'd taste in normal water. It didn't even taste like _me_ , and the complete lack of taste as I felt liquid wash over my tongue and go down my throat was…actually somewhat unsettling. I should taste _something_ , my brain insisted, but I was more than halfway sure this wasn't real liquid at all, just the undine's magic forced into a tangible form that I could ritualistically imbibe.

Which was _also_ somewhat unsettling, not gonna lie.

The cup wasn't that big, so I drained it quickly and lowered the chalice, looking nervously over the silver rim at the undine even as she watched me. I didn't… _feel_ any different. Maybe a little uneasy, but when there was a magic creature that could easily eat my face swaying less than five feet away, that was probably a natural reaction.

 _"Should I be feeling any_ –woah."

I blinked dizzily as my head suddenly swam. It was like the end of an all-night study marathon, except the information-crammed-in brain disorientation and _headache_ were thrust upon me all at once, instead of the growing effect of seven hours of caffeine and panic. It was quite plausibly _the_ most uncomfortable intentional magical experience I'd had to date, even though the hurricane of new information in my brain didn't make for _that_ painful of a headache. It was more the unexpectedness of it all.

 _"It is time for thee to complete thy side of the pledge."_ the undine reminded me in a testy sort of voice, and I nodded wincingly, wishing that I could let go of the cup now and rub my throbbing skull.

 _"Right."_ I mumbled, shuffling my feet and pulling my shoulders back until I stood upright once again. I then closed my eyes and inhaled once, envisioning a much-simpler pentacle in my mind's eye and focusing my willpower on it, using the two-dimensional matrix to take hold of the magic in this area and _pull_. The undine was safe from the effects of this because she was in another pentacle, and one I had specifically designed to repel a magic-drain like this, so she could just watch in increasing satisfaction as the chalice in my hands began to glow, radiating the power I was taking in and condensing as my hands began to tingle where they touched the metal.

Finally I heard her make a small noise, and I opened my eyes, seeing the chalice in my hands shining like a beacon as the undine eyed it in avid anticipation. _"Is this enough to repay your generous gift?"_ I asked, raising the cup. She nodded, and I stepped closer, handing her the chalice as her watery hands closed around it. _"I give you this power, as sworn,"_ I intoned carefully as I let go of the metal stem. _"Drink to your satisfaction, and depart when sated."_

Nothing loath, the undine rose to a towering form that swooped and curled like a snake around the hovering cup, forming a ball of foaming, churning water that loomed above the ground, the glow in its middle lessening, lessening, until it was gone. My eyes widened as, the moment the glow winked out, the undine's mass of water simply crashed onto the ground, dissolving into a loose tide of foam-flecked seawater that splashed onto the floorboards and licked against my boots, soaking into the chalk pentacle and forming a very large, messy puddle on the wooden floor around the still-full basin of seawater as the silver chalice clanged, empty, into the middle of it.

_Damn._

On the plus side, the undine hadn't removed any fleshy bits of me and, from the words flirting around the edges of my aching head, she had done exactly as I had asked and shoved a thorough knowledge of Latin into my brain pan. On the downside, she had left a really big puddle of saltwater and an overturned chalice on wooden floorboards, and while I could simply stash and dash with the cup, there was a slight…issue with leaving the pool of water where it was. Namely that Sebastian would turn that subtlest of vexed glares upon me that he did so well, the one where his prim mask of butler-hood didn't slip so much as an inch despite the fact you could _feel_ the irritation rolling off him in waves.

I gulped and leaned down, picking up the dripping silver chalice and undoing the clasp of my hooded cloak in the same moment, pulling the black fabric off my shoulders and wrapping it busily around the cup. I walked around the pool of water, scooping up my colored candles as I went –there was hardly a point in scrubbing at the pentacle, the chalk lines had all dissolved into cloudy patches of color inside the still water. I tucked the candle nubs into my hood and then rolled that into my bundle, tucking said bundle under my arm before I eased open the door, glancing left and right to make sure no curious servants would want to poke at what I was doing here.

Corridor reassuringly empty, I scooted out of the room, then leaned against the ajar door with a weary exhale, pushing it closed with the weight of my body and shoulders.

It'd been a week since the Phantomhive Murders arc, and things were going well.

_***Time Skip***_

One hasty detour to stash my magic supplies in my apocalypse bag later, and another to grab a mop, I was back in the Phantomhive family library, tapping a pencil against my journal with a series of reference books piled around me. As previously stated, the problem with compiling a magic spell of this magnitude wasn't so much the actual complicated work involved (at least not at this point), it was the enormous mountain of paperwork that I had to compile, and _then_ condense. It was, quite literally, an entire world's worth of _stuff_ , of various sigils representing various things that I had to eliminate as the end point of my spell, since I was using the large pentagram to draw in power, source the eventual location of my terminus, and, in a magical sense, absolutely prohibit any and all locations of this current plane of existence from showing up in my end destination, since, surprise surprise, ripping a hole in time and space could result in extreme messy, cast-into-black-hole-of-reality, manifested-halfway-through-a-tree-trunk type shenanigans if one wasn't careful in specifying just _exactly_ what you wanted from it.

By combining seals of prohibition with the sigil codifying a single world, which my mentor Britain had already done for his world, his 2p!'s world, and the world we sent the 2p!s to, I would eliminate the possibility of ending up in said worlds, and since I would also be attaching modifiers to source "me", the theoretical end result would be that the magic would read my being, find the corresponding plane of reality that I was from, and send me there. However, worlds with trace amounts of me (like _Black Butler_ and _Hetalia_ , because I'd been there, and the 2p! worlds, because I'd been involved with spells there) would fuck up the readings and potentially send me right back where I came from. Hence, compiling a comprehensive world sigil of my own that prohibited any and all materials in this world from "showing up" on the magic reading when I got the spell in gear.

Hence, my piles and piles of research. I needed to find the specific magical sign or mark corresponding to every known everything in this dimension, _then_ combine them together into manageable bits, then combine _those_ bits together into one sigil with a seal of prohibition, and then I could add it into my pentacle.

Unsurprisingly, it was taking a while, especially since a magical symbol representing, say, "the entirety of the Midwestern US" or "the bottom of the ocean" was not exactly in Magic Book 101. The easiest stuff was actually the most outré –I had, _thankfully_ , eliminated the realms of both the Grim Reapers and…wherever the hell (pun not intended) demons came from already, wholesale, with one sigil each that I'd found in some _very_ hush-hush-looking old tomes. The book I found the demon sigil in did not mention the realm name that I saw, but then again, I wasn't looking very hard for specifics: it was very old and very spooky and I _think_ there had been old bloodstains gumming up some of the pages. And the less said about the suspiciously-clawlike rents on the back cover, the better.

Magic was a dangerous profession around here.

Suffice it to say, I had checked with Sebastian about the authenticity of the sigil and gratefully moved on, after some well-justified book-burning. People didn't need to know about the shit I found in that grimoire, especially not power-hungry magic-snatching douchebags. (The fact that the flames had turned several interesting colors after I threw the book on also did not bode well for its contents.)

Currently I was plowing through some somewhat obscure Latin books on the Mediterranean and its surrounding environs, which was almost perfect for my purposes, since they included a fair amount of detail on a few African territories and the subsequent magic sigils. I was confident that with enough work today, I could get a lot of legwork done regarding those areas, with maybe even enough stuff to compose another few pages in my actual journal/workbook, as opposed to the extra one I pilfered off of Ciel to take notes in, since at the hopefully-not-hypothetical time I would work this spell, I would be reading off all the magical symbols I used and connecting them together with more magical words, and could not afford a misstep because I read some notes as opposed to the finished product.

Nose firmly between the pages of my notebook, I noticed a potentially errant twirl at the end of a sigil I had just written down, and reached over to the nearest low stack of books without looking, since the ones I'd been using heavily were scattered around my workspace in small, one-and-two piles, with larger stacks of completed or useless volumes fringing the edges like clerkly pillars of doom.

My hand touched something smooth, silky, lukewarm, and faintly ridged.

I blinked and looked over.

The snake I had my hand on looked at me.

"EEK!"

Faster than I would've thought possible, I launched myself back in the chair, heart pounding as the wooden legs screeched and skittered backwards a little on the polished floor due to my momentum. "Dude!" I spluttered indignantly at the green snake, which flicked its tongue at me calmly. "W… _warn_ me or somethin' next time when you come in! And what are you doing on the table anyways?!"

There was a slightly longer pause then I expected, after which the snake hissed impatiently. I heard a faint, guilty-sounding shuffle from farther in the library, and a few moments later a flustered-looking Snake popped out from between the shelves, striding towards us.

"I am quite terribly sorry –says Goethe." he apologized sheepishly, the snake coiled around his shoulders rustling and hissing a little. "Snake was reading in an armchair in the nice warm sunlight, so we were all taking a nap, he adds."

The snake on my books hissed again and squirmed over to him as Snake calmly held out his wrist, slithering onto the table. "Apologies for startling you," he added as he changed his voice again, the snake slithering up his arm. "-but I was wondering what you might be reading –says Oscar."

Snake seemed to share that curiosity as he blinked at me with innocently expectant yellow eyes, and I smiled right back at him as I surreptitiously reached over and flipped my reference notebook shut without breaking eye contact. Thank my dubiously lucky stars that it was the only book that might incriminate me, aside from my already-closed main journal, because Ciel had said to keep that stuff in the down-low.

"Boring business junk." I then yawned with an exaggeratedly weary shrug, slumping back in my chair. "You find anything interesting?"

The anime sparkles were back, I could feel them being back as Snake clenched both fists and grinned at me, eyes going wide. If this was still animation that I could see, he probably would've chibified as he gestured his excitement.

"Yes indeed!" Snake gasped eagerly. "There are so many many wonderful books here, like _The Happy Prince and Other Tales_ , and _The Prelude_ , and _The Sorrows of Young Werther_ , and _Faust_ , and the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ and all the works of the Brontë sisters and Keats's poems and John Donne and even some American authors and-"

Even Snake had to pause for breath, and I blinked once or twice and offered a tentative smile as he did. I understood only vaguely some of those names – _Faust_ and the Greek works I understood completely, of course, and more or less all the authors– and I wasn't about to trip up by offering the books I _did_ know, because sourcing publication dates wasn't exactly something one did when reading old novels and for all I knew I would be gushing about a story written eighty years in the future.

_Although…_

I looked at my work. I looked at Snake.

_No, be strong. You have things to do, something you need to focus on. You have **work**. Be strong._

"…you know," my traitor mouth said slowly. "-I could probably use a break right now. You have any of those books you might wanna recommend?"

It was just research. I was figuring out how to blend in, as a bookworm I needed to have books to talk about, right? And since I'd barely heard of most of the works Snake so excitedly was ranting about, well, obviously I'd need to read them for myself, right, since there wasn't exactly a wiki to scrape knowledge from anymore?

_…ah, who am I kidding. I'm so fucking weak._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 8.19 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 28th, 2019, 11.22 AM USA Central Time


	37. That Butler, Harbinger

_Arya's POV:_

I had since discovered, after my immersion into the world of fiction, that it was a decided fact that _actually_ having to interact with the characters of any given anime was sharply different than cooing over them on the not-so-silver screen. I was a huge fan of _Black Butler_ , but that had been when I was not to all intents and purposes a lackey to a very calculated schemer (Ciel) and his pet soulless abomination (Sebastian) who could and would kill me in a likely-gruesome manner the moment he had a plausible excuse from his ruthlessly efficient master (Ciel again). As one might expect, my inner appreciation for the both of them had sunk, somewhat. I'd probably still nerd over them later, but it would be _later_ , when I was safely out of this world and no longer in the line of sights for collateral damage.

On the reverse side, I was finding Snake to be infinitely more enjoyable as a person, now that I was actually face-to-face and speaking with him, than I had when he was a 2D image. What I liked as a character was amplified as a friend, and, furthermore, he was the bookwormiest bookworm to ever bookworm. The amount of literature my yellow-eyed associate had devoured over his twenty-some years (I hadn't really asked how old he was, as it was a weird question to ask someone during casual conversation in this time period and it honestly didn't matter, nor did I really care) was quite frankly astounding. I'd probably seen libraries smaller than Snake's mental repertoire of novella and epics.

And "repertoire" was the right word –Snake, the _bastard_ , apparently had a nigh-on photographic memory, and could recite lines from the books he'd read verbatim. We'd taken to casually sniping at each other as we passed in the halls, or sat at opposite ends in the library, or worked in the kitchen, which bemused the other servants to no end, each of us throwing out a line from a story and waiting smugly for the other to guess the source or forfeit. My records of wins to losses was probably somewhere in the 3/10 ratio, because, as mentioned, Snake had an unfairly good memory, not to mention (though obviously I had to leave this unsaid) a "local" knowledge of the time period we were in and the books currently published. If this had been the twenty-first century, oh, if I could use my full range of knowledge, trust me, we'd be pitching a whole different ballgame. As it was I had to scrounge from things within the accepted medium, and my memory of those was foggy at best. I was making progress, sure, but all the books were recommended by Snake and thusly ones he probably knew by heart.

Scaly know-it-all bastard.

The summons to Ciel's study, delivered by Sebastian after breakfast one morning as me and Snake were lending a hand to the dishes with the other servants, took me by surprise, until I mentally ticked back all the arcs and realized we were heading full-steam –pun not intended– into the Luxury Liner/Atlantic arc. To my somewhat uncertain knowledge, the information that led to the arc's beginning was preceded by a hospital "raising the dead," which, being as I was a magician…

I hastily grabbed a towel and dried my hands and lower arms beneath the elbow. Unable to resist the temptation, I threw a line at Snake as I turned to leave, since slipping in a quote as I left the room was one of the few ways I left him unable to respond –since, you know, I wouldn't be around to hear his answer. (Petty victory? Yes, but with so few to my bag, I had to be a little underhanded.)

 _"Thus kindly I scatter/Thy leaves o'er the bed/Where thy mates of the garden/Lie scentless and dead."_ I flung at him, and Snake raised his suds-covered brush from the sink in calm dismissal without even looking away from his work.

 _"Last Rose of Summer_ , by Thomas Moore –says Keats." he replied casually. _"I am the spirit that negates./And rightly so, for all that comes to be/Deserves to perish wretchedly;/'Twere better nothing would begin./Thus everything that that your terms, sin,/Destruction, evil represent—/That is my proper element."_

"Uh, uh, that's-" My mind blanked. "Goethe's _Faust?"_ I tried tentatively after a moment. Snake sighed my victory with an exaggerated heave of his shoulders, and I quickly ducked out of the kitchen before more literary misfortune could be heaved upon me.

_I'll get him someday._

Since it was Ciel, my employer, I rolled down the sleeves of my dark green gown and buttoned them primly at the wrists, giving an errant pat to my hair to settle and smooth down any stray strands. Professionalism was a thing, after all, and as a former bellhop I knew the importance of a properly cared-for uniform as opposed to one sloppily thrown on –not that I actually _had_ a uniform, here, but presentation still mattered.

I knocked at the door and got permission to enter. It was eerily similar to the previous meeting I'd had with the duo –Ciel behind his desk working, Sebastian standing respectfully a few paces in front of it, facing me, arms folded behind his back for now– except there was a silver cart with a tea service (only more breakfasty-looking) on it by the desk and Ciel was absently munching on some kind of small cake as he read an invoice…or whatever those papers were. I didn't know and it wasn't like he'd ever tell me, and I wasn't even gonna _try_ to _think_ about poking through the young earl's desk –firstly because I had no damn reason to, and secondly he would probably order Sebastian to administer some kind of punishment, and I did _not_ want to take my chances with how far the demon would push that order. Casual dislike went a long way when you were as petty as demons apparently were.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" I asked, taking the usual moment to quash my own wounded ego at the act of sir-ing a boy several years younger than I was.

Ciel chewed and swallowed without glancing up from his paper, then looked at me. "Ah, yes…Miss Thompson, what do you know of necromancy?"

I deadpanned internally. _Well, he doesn't beat around the bush, I'll give him that much._

"Necro, from Greek _nekros_ , which means 'corpse'. Necromancy is magic that has to do with the dead." I recited from memory, briefly moving a hand towards my face before I realized I didn't have any glasses to do the anime-click with. Ciel chewed on his cake, unconcerned, as he listened. "Necromancy mainly has to do with communicating, controlling, or raising the those who have passed on. Why?"

"Is raising the dead _possible?"_ Ciel stressed as he finished and leaned forward onto his elbows, resting his chin on his folded hands as he watched me intently. For a tell? I mean, to he and Sebastian's knowledge I literally just fell out of the sky, and I was one of the few still-living magicians in Britain. That counted for something –was I in league with, uh, the Aurora Society (that was the resurrectionists' name, right?), and if so, if not, so on and so forth and blah blah blah suspicion. This kid was sharp, and paranoia only sharpened him further.

Too bad I had nothing to hide.

"What kind of raising we talking about here?" I asked, playing the coy side of my own knowledge.

Ciel and Sebastian exchanged a look. "Is it possible at all?" Ciel hedged himself, still not giving me the full story, and I bit my lip. This was a bit shakier than what I was comfortable with.

"The way I was taught, and the way it worked in _my_ world," I said slowly, hoping I wasn't directly contradicting any cosmic laws of the _Black Butler_ universe. "-is that you can't resurrect someone who's moved on to…well, whatever afterlife they're destined for. I would guess that's also true for any souls eaten by a demon or otherwise destroyed."

I glanced at Sebastian, who nodded slowly, seemingly in conjuncture with this information.

"What you can do –to some extent– is manipulate souls who have not yet gone… _on_." I continued heavily, for lack of proper description. "Souls that linger on Earth, or in the Veil or Limbo or any one of the many names for the space between this life and the next. The fact that you can pull them back, with enough power and the right incantations, has long been accepted in my world and, according to things I've run across here-" Like a _fucking necromancer_. "-this one as well. The soul will be little more than a ghost, even if fed the proper amount and type of magic, and to my understanding, even if you _can_ control how the spirits act and move, you can't put them in a body that isn't anything but dead, or keep a body they get put in from rotting. It just doesn't work. Also…" I licked my dry lips. "Spirits that get pulled back are…lost. Tormented. They're not supposed to be here anymore, on Earth: it's unnatural, and it hurts them."

"Would a sufficiently ruthless magician be able to continuously rehouse the spirit in near-identical bodies, replacing them in such a fashion that the resurrected client appeared not to decompose?" Sebastian asked thoughtfully as Ciel stared at me, his lone eye glinting with strange, dark emotions I couldn't read.

I scratched my head, shifting from foot to foot. "Um…maybe? I mean, that'd probably work in the short term, if the necromancer had constant access to the person, but it'd break down pretty soon. Like I said, spirits really aren't supposed to be here after they've moved on past the Veil, and when they do get pulled back, they're in constant, unblockable pain. While the necromancer could force them to keep quiet about it and stay smiling and happy and normal for the client's family or whatever, eventually the agony would wear on the spirit's mind to such an extent it'd snap, and then the spirit wouldn't have any kind of functionality to _obey_ orders."

"And yet ghosts exist?" Ciel asked skeptically, and I shrugged.

"Ghosts are different –they're deceased who _choose_ to stay here. Their ties are here, and there's nothing pulling them on. That's what hurts when spirits are dragged back from their path to the afterlife –it may take a while to cross the Veil, apparently, but they're still moving on, and being yanked back _hurts_ , because there's still a _considerably_ more almighty force that keeps trying to drag them on. My teacher used the analogy of a rubber band being pulled by a person on one end and a train on the other until it snaps, except the snap is happening while the band is still getting pulled by the "hand" of necromancy…ghosts, on the other hand, are just a rubber band at rest."

"I see." Ciel looked down at his desk and made a short note to a nearby paper. Without looking up, he added "So it is your opinion that even for a hospital it is not, in fact, possible to raise the dead due to magic?"

"I'd say it's pretty damn unlikely." I answered bluntly, folding my arms. I finally decide to bite the bullet. "What's this all about, anyways?"

Ciel hummed and did not look up as he continued to scratch off notes. "Karnstein Hospital is _claiming_ to resurrect the dead." he answered me directly, at last. "Allegedly they've managed to do this with dozens of patients. Lau also mentioned earlier today that they have been purchasing exorbitant amounts of people from the docks that deal in human trafficking."

_Oh shit Lau was here today I forgot he was the one to bring it up I hope he's not still in the house oh **god** that's unsettling that he dropped by without me noticing._

"I was wondering, then, if you had any… _magical_ explanations for such behaviors."

I shook my head, shifting again as I stood hipshot. "Bringing spirits back and stuffing them in bodies takes a lot of magic, like, a _lot_ , even without doing something to at least _try_ and stop decomposition, and I'm _pretty sure_ that it's something Sebastian would've noticed by now with his freaky demon powers or whatever, if they tried doing that with more than twenty people, and according to your report or whatever, it's been a lot more than twenty."

I heard a quiet, somewhat annoyed near-silent huff of air from Sebastian's direction, and ignored it.

"And if they're resurrecting for families in mourning, they'd have to cobble together something that doesn't rot and doesn't constantly wail in agony whenever the necromancer's attention slips –no, I don't think they're using magic to bring anyone back. Augmenting magic with something else, or something else with magic…maybe. But nothing in the books I know says you can do anything even close to what these people are claiming to accomplish with magic alone." I said with finality, folding my arms.

"I see." Ciel commented, laying down his pen. "Sebastian!"

"Yes, my young lord?" the demonic butler asked, sidestepping me neatly as he turned to look at Ciel.

"Look into this at once." the young earl ordered crisply. His blue eye turned to me as Sebastian made himself scarce, whipping out of sight in the way that only a demon could manage. "We may have further need of your services on this case in the future, Miss Thompson. Do you have any objections to dissecting one of these so-called resurrected corpses, should we manage to bring one in as a sample?"

"Does not knowing how to dissect a corpse count as objection?" I deadpanned.

"Mm." One of Ciel's eyebrows twitched in irritation as he stared at me over his folded hands. Then something seemed to occur to him, and the irritation faded as his blue eye turned sharp and inquisitive again. "You said 'what _kind'_ of resurrection. There's more than one?"

"Uh, three kinds, technically." I fumbled, feeling oddly uncomfortable under his focused, hawklike gaze. "First, most common for those trying to make a quick buck, is to yank back spirits as pure, well, spirits, and gussy them up to look like whatever grieving clients are paying for. You know, mediumistic communication, the Spiritualist movement, all that, except its identity-fraud of spirits instead of just dressing someone up to look like a spirit. Second, the _real_ powerful megalomaniacs tend to make undead slaves –there's nothing in the corpses but the magician's will, so assembling a lot of them is hard to do and they rot just like anything else, but for a while at least you're puppeteer to a whole army of pitiless, fearless, nigh-invulnerable soldiers. Last one is the 'trying-to-shove-soul-in-body' that we talked about, really not done that much unless the magician themselves wants someone back."

Ciel nodded slowly, his eye growing distant. "I see."

There was a moment of somewhat awkward silence –I was betting he was musing on his parents and gee, wasn't that a fun train of thought to be incidentally voyeur to– before there was a sudden patter of rapid, short footsteps in the hallway outside.

"Ciel!" Lizzie cried as she burst in through the door, bringing with her a waft of rose scent and an explosion of pastel color, huge emerald eyes gleaming excitedly. "Listen to this! Listen to thiiiis!"

She blinked as she saw me. "Oh. Hello, miss?"

"Hey." I grinned lazily and gave her a two-fingered salute, turning away slightly from the desk to do so. "Name's Aryana Thompson, I work for Mister Phantomhive in his company. Branch manager in America, y'know."

"Oh." She blinked once, a pleased smile curving her lips upwards (probably happy that I wasn't a vector for Ciel cheating on her or something – _I_ remembered that panel in the manga, in regards to Sieglinde), and sank into a dainty curtsy, lifting up her ruched skirts. "It's a privilege to meet you, Miss Thompson. I am Lady Elizabeth Ethel Cordelia Midford, daughter of Marquess Alexis Leon Midford, fiancée and future wife of Earl Ciel Phantomhive."

"Uh-huh, yeah. Charmed." I offered a slightly overwhelmed smile –what _was_ it with British aristocracy that they'd never use one title when six would do? Some sort of showing off? An overt way to parade their oh-so-noble heritage around?

While I was thus occupied puzzling out the reasoning and etiquette behind the greetings of nobility, Lizzie had strode across the room in several quick clicks of her low heels and seized Ciel's hands, vibrating with untold excitement once more. "It's been decided that were going on a family trip in April! A three-week excursion to New York on a luxury passenger liner, starting on the seventeenth!" she gushed, anime sparkles radiating outwards from her. "And, and, Father was wondering if you might like to join us!"

"I think not." Ciel declined flatly, making Lizzie release his hands and pout, clenching her own near her chest.

"Eeeeh? But it's a ticket for the maiden voyage of the _Campania_ , said to be the most opulent passenger liner in the world, you know! Why, even Mother said Ciel should take some time off once in a while…"

Ciel shrank in on himself, weighed down by the fluttering color, whirling movements, and exuberance of his fiancée. "I truly appreciate the thought, but I can't absent myself from work for such a length a time." he mumbled apologetically, and Lizzie drooped, her mouth and eyes turning down as her whole posture slumped like a wilting flower stalk.

"Oh…" she murmured pitifully to herself, sniffling a little. Ciel held firm against her truly impressive kicked-puppy face and little sniffs for a solid ten seconds, before he sighed loudly and looked away.

"A place nearby would be alright, I suppose." he tossed out, and Lizzie perked upwards as though struck be lightening.

"Eh?!"

"I can make the time to take a few days' leave and accompany you wherever you want to go. So-"

He choked to a halt as Lizzie flung her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. "Anywhere is fine if we're together! I'm so happy~!" she trilled, nuzzling into the top of his hair and squeezing the slightly-smaller earl even harder.

"That _anywhere_ causes me the most concern." Ciel mumbled, and I took the opportunity to slink out of the room, leaving him to the octopus-like clutches of his over-adoring fiancée. I had research to do, and if this was going where I thought it would, I also had a bag of nonessentials to plan and pack for a trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 8.27 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 29th, 2019, 11.07 AM USA Central Time


	38. That Butler, Lone Ranger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Arya references is from the comedic opera H.M.S. Pinafore, which I saw as a kid at the Children's Theatre, which is right off the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and I only just recently learned that it was, in fact, actually first written by Gilbert and Sullivan and performed in 1878. I know this really doesn't signify, but if you've seen the play, it reads like…it's on the same level as Hamilton. It feels so modern. Finding out it was almost older than Ciel messed me up. I was so shook.

_Arya's POV:_

A bright spring morning the day following Lizzie's whirlwind visit found me on the Phantomhive firing range after a lukewarm breakfast of oatmeal and fruit, my blonde hair looped and twisted back into a rough knot at the back of my head via a stiletto hatpin, and my Colt in hand, with several boxes of ammunition on a nearby stone, ready to practice. My aim, it had to be said, was not of the best, and though I knew how to _maintain_ a gun, firing and reloading in a speedy matter were other issues.

And since I was likely to be chucked face-first into a zombie horde within a couple weeks, practice seemed not only _warranted_ , but positively necessary.

There were several problems with my gun. Number one, it was a reproduction of the antique model, and while that meant I wouldn't have to find any replacements to soothe the denizens of this time period with a weapon they _recognized_ , it also meant that my Colt held, at maximum, six rounds. Also, I could only fire one shot at a time, pulling the hammer back to rotate the chambers and allowing for the release of the next bullet before I could take a second shot. This slowed me down considerably.

Another, much more minor problem, was how the gun was shaped. In my very, very minimal experience, I'd been dealing with the angular plastic grips of modern pistols, and the Colt's rounded, eagle-engraved grip took a moment of mental adjustment, which added more precious seconds onto my reaction and fire time. (It also made me drop the weapon hastily a few times when the recoil barked my bandaged knuckles due to my reflexive but incorrect grip, but that was neither here nor there.)

Last and not least, I just plain wasn't used to firearms. In the past, whenever I'd fought (with "fighting" being the very generous term), I'd mostly been waving around a pocketknife or some other small blade for the brief few moments of intimidation between me and my opponent before I ran the other way, which was usually the wisest decision when confronted with regenerating psychopaths. On the rare occasions actual blows were exchanged, it was usually inexpert fisticuffs and for one memorable fight, a thrown rock. The only times a gun had been passed into my hands was when I was borrowing someone else's weapon or hastily given one for self-defense.

So yes, I needed to practice.

The deeply unsatisfying pockmarks decorating the white bullseye –none went in past the first two black rings– glared at me across the turf as I scowled and reloaded my gun, muttering crossly to myself. I knew it was stupid to expect to be good right off the bat, but I did hope to at least be hitting _roughly_ where I wanted to hit after several painstaking hours of practice yesterday afternoon. Some improvement _would_ have been nice.

Swearing colorfully under my breath, I heeled the gun up and snapped off another shot. There was a _bang_ , and another leaden pockmark spurted into existence on the white board as it quavered a little, then steadied. I rolled the hammer back with my thumb and took another shot, wincing as the recoil jarred my bandaged fingers and scraped knuckles. Neither shot hit anywhere close to the center.

This was going to take a while.

_***Time Skip***_

So focused was I on mastering the schematics of this gun, that I barely registered the growing empty space in my stomach until Mey-rin piped up behind me.

"I brought you some lunch, Miss Arya. You must be right hungry, standing out here all day!"

I jumped, my finger luckily off the trigger for once, for otherwise there might've been an accident. Then again…Mey-rin _was_ the one with the pistols stuffed down her maid skirts. She knew shit about guns: she'd probably waited until I wasn't pulling the trigger on _purpose_.

"Uh, yeah, sure…" I said, hastily jamming my Colt into the holster on my hip and turning around. My bandages were smudged with and subtly stank of gunpowder, and I wrinkled my nose a little as Mey-rin passed me a ceramic milkman's bottle full of water and a cloth bundle with several food-shaped lumps inside. I smelled like a fireworks factory.

"Any particular _reason_ you're out here doing this, miss?" Mey-rin asked me, eyes wide behind her glasses, as though mystified by the very concept of target practice –when I very well knew she was probably trained as an assassin.

I stalled for only half a second before coming up with an ironclad alibi. "I'm an American." I said with a candid shrug, sitting down on my ammunition rock and setting the bottle down on the ground, before starting to unwrap the bundle of food. "Gotta get in my yearly dose of gunfire somehow."

"Ah, I see." Mey-rin made a careful adjustment of her thick glasses as I tore into the plowman's meal. "Might I make an advisement, miss?"

I blinked a little, nonplussed. "Go for it." I said around a mouthful of freshly-baked bread, more than content to see what advice the expert markswoman had to offer.

Mey-rin took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

"Your stance is all off, miss. You need to be more relaxed and more open to your surroundings. You seem to be practicing for speed, and you aren't fanning the hammer, which slows you down considerably. There are newer models too, Miss Arya, that aren't single-action. You keep flinching at the recoil, and that throws off your aim, and you also seem to have loaded all six bullets into the chamber."

I blinked. Then I blinked once more. "Run that by me again?" I asked curiously, getting up and putting my lunch to the side as I pulled out my Colt and held it down by my side, unthreatening. Mey-rin stepped closer and took the gun from my unresisting hands.

"Like this, miss." she said, tilting her glasses up onto her forehead and narrowing her eyes at the target.

What followed was by far the most interesting hour I had ever spent in Mey-rin's presence, as she walked me through the mechanics of my Colt in excruciating detail. Like how the lack of a safety release meant loading all six chambers unless actively shooting left the chance of the gun going off if I bumped it hard enough. Like how one could "fan" the hammer while shooting to allow for continuous action. Like how the cartridge ejected to the right, so it was better to stand just slightly to the left of the gun and aim my arms a _smidge_ to the right, so that I could see what I was doing while spent shells were still flying.

Under her tutelage, the line of shiny pockmarks slowly marched in towards the center of the target, and if I wasn't setting any speed records, at least a solid thirty seconds weren't transpiring between each shot. As she pointed and demonstrated under the bright, crisp March sunshine, I was, once again, reminded of how much I was winging…this. My plans. _Everything._

Unlike a decent percentage of Mary Sues, I wasn't the scion of a military family or someone with military best friends, so my closest experience with a gun had hitherto been regulated to the opposite side of a movie screen. I didn't have casual knowledge of judo picked up from childhood weekend visits to my local dojo, I didn't have a wise old gramps who taught me shit about strategy. I'd been picked up and flung headfirst into the chaotic world of anime –I would have missed the latter half of my high school education at this point– without a scrap of support to get me by.

It was alright enough in _Hetalia_ , where I had quickly formed a small coterie of loyal friends, all of whom were centuries older than I was and had more military knowledge in their littlest fingernail than my whole family. They guided me, taught me enough ropes that I didn't prematurely end my career of thwarting evil magicians as a bloody lump of meat, and were just generally _there_ when I needed it.

Problem was, they weren't always the kind of "there" that I _needed_. Nobody had been there to advise me on the best way to tell very angry and very powerful people who suspected me of deception and worse that I was from another dimension and they all, in fact, were fictional. Nobody was around to tell me what might be the best way to control and limit the knowledge of said information, or what to do when all the machinations of my friends failed and I was dumped in the wrong dimension. And there _definitely_ wasn't anybody here, now, to tell me the ins and outs and dos and don'ts of how to work magic on my own: sure I had a phone, but with no way to recharge the battery, once that was dead, I was well and truly stuck without even the prayer of support. I had to figure all this shit out myself.

I _theorized_ , but had no way to prove, that this was the same sort of disconnect people got when moving out to live on their own, or vacationing without their family and friends. I was completely on my own, winging everything from proper budgeting (room and board were free at the manor, but how much money did I have for spellbooks, notebooks, ink, pens, and bullets, and how could I divide it most efficiently? What even _was_ the most efficient division?) to my own time management to which skills I decided I needed to sharpen, hone, and learn.

And I had to do it all on my own. My support network was gone, with no other able to take its place.

Ciel was my boss, plain and simple: he wanted results and action, not necessarily in that order, and otherwise wanted little to do with me. Sebastian had an ingrained apathy towards my kindred and while he would _help_ me with whatever I dared to bring to him, he wouldn't do so without being asked, and his silent aura of smugness and condescension as he did so made me want to slam his supernaturally-pretty face through a wall, every time.

Not that I could. Not that I dared. But _ooh_ , it was tempting sometimes.

Mey-rin and the other servants were nice, if usually busy and always distracted, but to be brutally honest, they didn't really have the clout to help me out with anything I needed help with. Marksmanship? Sure, Mey-rin clearly had me covered –pun not intended. Spell calculus? Not so much.

I was stiflingly, terrifyingly alone, an inexperienced teenager all of 17, trying to learn to shoot a gun for the first time so she wouldn't get her face chewed off three weeks hence. I was trying to formulate a spell that a trio of magicians a hundred times my age and experience had botched, all by myself, with only a rudimentary knowledge of magical theory and a huge pile of reference books to go by. Trying to piece together all those random surface bits and sigils was just as if not _more_ complicated than a college-grad thesis, and here I was, all alone, with no one to check my metaphorical grammar. The _only_ certain knowledge and support I had right now was vaguely knowing how the plot of _Black Butler_ would go, and even that was only up until a certain point.

So it was nice, just for an afternoon, to have solid ground beneath my feet again, and someone who actually knew what they were doing to have my back.

"You're improving quite a bit, yes you are." Mey-rin said as we stepped a little to the right, my first target now a torn and shredded mess of white paper nailed to the support back. "How long are you intending to keep this up?"

I shot, second ring in from the center. "Every day."

"Really, miss?!"

"Every day, until I get it right." I answered firmly. Mey-rin flustered, her glasses long since replaced on her pale nose, before her posture suddenly straightened, as though she'd remembered something.

"Oh yes! And before I forget again, Miss Arya, the young master is planning a surprise excursion on the _Campania_ , a luxury liner to America, yes he is, to accompany his fiancée, and he requests that you come with! America is, after all, _'your line of expertise'_." She fiddled with her glasses uncertainly. "I don't know why he phrased it like that. It was quite odd, yes it was, but he asked me to pass that line of the message on verbatim!"

"Who can fathom such a decision." I deadpanned.

"Still though, how fine!" Mey-rin exclaimed, waiting until I was between shots to pat me on the back. "You get to go back home and visit! Isn't it amazing that the young master decided on such a trip, and to bring you along, too!"

"Color me shocked." I muttered under my breath, thumbing the hammer back.

Mey-rin blinked. "What was that, miss?" she asked me.

"I said _'Could you hand me that box?'"_

_***Time Skip***_

My days soon slipped into a hectic, whirlwind schedule of activity. First in the day was riding practice to keep me wise to Dämon's tricks and keep him in shape, followed by target practice, followed by lunch, followed by frenetic studying, followed by French lessons, followed by more target practice. My magical practices were starting to slip as I crammed more and more time into mastering the art of accurately riddling things with bullets, and even my efforts at finding more sigils and tying them into the spell matrix were set aside. The way I saw it, my progress in getting home, and the accomplishment thereof, would mean precisely jack if I was dead, and I very, _very_ much did not want to die on a ship of zombies.

This, in turn, occasioned several trips to London on horseback, wherein I purchased exorbitant, definitely-would-have-put-me-on-a-list-in-the-modern-day amounts of .45 bullets –since I was burning through upwards of half a dozen packs a day in my practices– and several other little things for the trip. This would be the first time in a while that I wasn't not-quite-literally living out of my apocalypse bag, a feat less impressive (and pitiful) than it sounded when one considered the hammerspace spell placed upon it, and as such I was surprisingly underprepared for packing. After all, this was _supposed_ to be a month-long holiday, and while I had no intention of packing _everything_ I'd need for such a trip, I also couldn't stuff two days of supplies into a tote bag and call it a day. Someone would cotton on.

This was partially because I had no intention of explaining the true meta implications and facts of my situation to Ciel and Sebastian, but mainly out of simple function. Having never truly traveled anywhere without my recently-enchanted apocalypse bag, I was woefully inept and unpracticed at regular packing.

The reason I wouldn't tell them about the _Black Butler_ series unless under pain of death was quite simple: by my two-years-out-of-date count, wherein the last thing I'd even heard about was Ciel going to investigate a funky music hall, the series hadn't ended. As such, I didn't know the full implications of their characters, nor how their lives would end with the series, nor how the plot would treat them and the people around them. Thus, unlike the _Hetalia_ characters, I was not entirely certain of how far I could trust the duo, especially when one considered the Machiavellian-level intrigues and cruel plans and even worse twists of fate the series was built on.

Thus, I was playing my cards close to my chest, as the one and only slender advantage I had over Ciel and Sebastian. Within limits, and without my mere presence doing something horrific to the cosmic plot, there was not a move they could make that I wouldn't at least slightly know about and understand. Given Ciel's predilection for grabbing at and twisting information, this would only be a benefit on both sides. He didn't need to know, and I didn't need to worry about what diabolical plots he would weave to _somehow_ make my limited knowledge benefit him.

I'd learned my lesson, even though it had been necessary back in _Hetalia_. Sometimes people just didn't need to know.

That being said, I was seriously considering somehow making my excuses and bowing out of the situation as I craned my neck back to look up at the looming shape of the luxury liner _Campania_ , one hand clamped tight around the edge of my summer hat's flat brim to keep it from whistling off in the brisk sea breeze that billowed and eddied along the dock and the other clenched tight around the strap of my canvas satchel, which was serving me in the stead of a modern suitcase.

Seagulls shrieked and wheeled overhead, and the contrast between the blue skies and dazzlingly bright sunlight and the harsh, looming black shadow cutting across the dock from the enormous ship was beginning to make both my eyes and my head hurt.

_Why did I agree to this. Oh right, I'd have to explain the real world to Ciel and Sebastian if I wanted to stay home._

_Still. Shit._

_Fucking zombies._

_Alright, fine! I can deal with this. Everything's fine. It's all going to be fine._

My somewhat lackluster pep talk was interrupted by Mey-rin, who insisted (again) that I remember to bring her back a nifty souvenir from America, since it was my homeland and she wanted to have something that reminded her of me.

The sentiment was sweet, but since I knew we would never get even halfway across the Atlantic (and also because I had to wake up at the asscrack of dawn to get on a train to this port) I merely grunted and nodded in vague affirmation, my droopy eyes trailing after Ciel, Sebastian, and Snake, who were all destined to accompany me on this trip to nowhere. Several crew members were carrying a crate emblazoned with the Funtom logo aboard, which if I remembered correctly was stuffed full of Snake's snakes.

"Come along then." Ciel not-quite-snapped as he strode briskly up the gangplank, probably in an equally bad mood for the same reason I was –namely, lack of sleep. I followed Snake up the overpriced First Class steps, yawning and hitching the strap of my satchel up over my shoulder so I had a hand to cover my mouth with.

"Man, first thing I'm gonna do once the ship sets off is take a nap." I hummed when my jaw realigned, and the back of Snake's hair bobbed affirmatively as he copied my yawn.

 _"Ah_ …we're poikilotherms, so we'll probably need to stay on deck and bask just to keep up our strength –says Donne." he sighed. "Perhaps you could report if the blankets belowdecks are warm, and then we could heat ourselves through Snake, who is more warm-blooded, as he takes a rest as well –he suggests."

"No prob." I promised as we, guided by several helpful ushers, ascended to the upper decks.

It was a trippy experience, being part of an old-school sendoff. Trans-Atlantic travel being much more hazardous these days, the docks were crammed with well-wishers and fluttering handkerchiefs, all wishing our safe return at journey's end, and the achingly bright blue sky danced with paper streamers and confetti as the ship plowed through the water and gave voice to several deep honks, announcing a successful start, at least, to the voyage. It was all very surprisingly cheerful and uplifting, compared to the blasé grab-a-ticket-and-go I was used to, but all the bright pageantry had a perversely sobering effect on me, as I looked at the sea of uplifted, beaming faces between the fluttering showers of confetti and wondered how many of them would soon be weeping and downcast over friends and relatives lost on this voyage.

The answer was probably a lot.

The wind tossed my hair as I leaned against the rail with the others and looked sidelong at Ciel, whose expression could best be described as "brooding".

"Do you have any immediate need for me, sir?" I asked, shifting the hand on my hat to pin it to my head by the crown. Since I was on his right side, thus hidden by the eyepatch, Ciel had to turn his head in its entirety to look at me, his eyebrows raised as he did.

"No, I can't think of anything I particularly need you for as yet. Why?" the young earl asked, sounding slightly nonplussed. I saluted him with the hand not keeping my hat from flying off into oblivion.

"Because, oh sir, I am going to go and find someplace comfy and horizontal and take a nice long nap until otherwise needed. Toodles!"

And with that I sauntered off, assuming (correctly) that the flock of crew members assigned exclusively to cater to the every possible whim of the First Class passengers, and strategically positioned at all entrances and exits to the deck, would know from my ticket stub where, exactly, my small cabin was.

Suiting word to deed, I followed the ornately-uniformed gentleman to my assigned room and, after a cursory divestment of both luggage and hat, collapsed facefirst on the narrow ship's bed and knew nothing more for several hours.

_***Time Skip***_

When I groggily regained consciousness again, blinking blearily up at the white plaster ceiling of my cabin room, the glowing disk of sunlight had shifted and elongated across the room, turning a rich orange-gold instead of a bright watery yellow. Postulating from this and the gnawing hunger in my stomach, I guessed that it was towards the end of the afternoon, and yawned, luxuriously stretching in a way that loudly popped several joints before rolling out of bed and looking around the room. To my surprise, there was a cream-colored, folded piece of paper standing out starkly against on the green carpet near the door, obviously having been slipped under it at some time during my restful nap.

With a shrug, I walked over and picked it up, going back over to the bed and sitting down again to take advantage of the slowly waning natural light to read my new note.

* * *

`Miss Thompson,`

`I and the young master have taken residence in Suite 103, should you have any need to contact us in the event of emergencies. We shall be joining the Midford family for luncheon and dinner later this evening and for all meals in the foreseeable future: your attendance is optional, as you are accompanying us in the capacity of your official position within the Funtom Corporation. Similarly, your presence is required two days hence with the young master and I in the First Class Lounge during the evening, so that we may attend our business meeting as previously discussed. Feel free to enjoy the amenities available in First Class during the interim, courtesy of Funtom Co.`

_`With regards,  
Michaelis, Butler to Earl Phantomhive`_

* * *

I liked the subtle reminder that it was Ciel who had forked over the money necessary to purchase a First-Class ticket, without which I would be languishing belowdecks in 3rd-Class squalor.

But still, it was nice to know I wouldn't have to watch my historical step around Lizzie's family, nor mind my Ps and Qs around the Victorian aristocracy. I had free reign to do as I liked for the next two days, more or less, and given our imminent terminal situation, I thought it best to ramble about the ship in a good old-fashioned exploration. After all, it was highly beneficial to scope out the ground before any enemy engagement, and it was with this military attitude that I pinned my hat in place and sauntered up to the deck, checking corridors as I went.

All the First-Class places I had access to were decorated in a way reminiscent of an old manor home, with dark colors and wood paneling interspersed with creamy white plaster walls, and thankfully, they were also fairly easy to navigate. I hardly needed any directions _or_ prior knowledge to find my way around, and the main difficulties would definitely be telling the mathematically-placed hallways apart from one another. One detour to the restaurant (the First Classers had a fucking _restaurant_ on our deck) to feed my growling belly, and I was clambering up to the open air to look around.

This far out into the open ocean –however far we were– there were less seagulls, and I inhaled with deep interest as I crowned the luxurious steps up to the top deck. All my previous experiences with travel had been overland, on horses and in cars, or in the sky, by airplane, so it was with decided curiosity that I looked around the wooden deck. Everything was gilded in the mellow light of the westering sun, which twinkled brightly off brass railings and glowed on the long, glossy expanse of polished dark wood, tinting the air amber and ochre and burnishing the orange sky and puffy red-gold clouds. The sea beneath us was a crinkling, olive-grey mass, speckled with little frills and flecks of foam as the water shifted and rolled, and even so high above the waterline, the air was completely permeated with the scent of salt and what I _thought_ might be seaweed, or at the very least, some kind of aquatic plant.

_How very nautical._

_"Then give three cheers and one cheer more, for the hardy Captain of the Pinafore~…"_ I mumbled to myself, grinning a little as I tugged my hat down and began a reconnaissance stroll around the deck, swaying just a tad in the brisk wind and nodding politely to the few other gentry I passed, trying to keep as low a profile as may be. Being dressed for practicality instead of floaty bustle-skirt high fashion, I didn't fit in, and I knew it.

Edging around the railing gave me a good notion of how the ship was laid out: it took a literal "as above, so below" view and stacked the classes on top of each other in descending order of wealth, with the First Class passengers perched on the upper deck, like a flock of pompous doves, above the Lesser Mortals™, aka the Second Class passengers, who laid claim to the main deck, with presumably Third Class stuffed belowdecks for the entirety of the voyage. This limited my options for exploration somewhat, since I was pretty sure a decent part of the recreational facilities on the ship were segregated by gender as well as class, like the Smoking Lounge and Ladies Parlor.

_Bah. Who cares. Not like I'll need to go in either, since they're entirely for socializing purposes._

I came up to the extreme forward end of the ship, or at least, the bit accessible by passengers, and grinned as I saw the multi-tier railings barring it in.

Feeling culturally obligated to do so, I went right up to the tip of the ship and leaned my breastbone against the high brass rail (for lack of a supporting partner), stretching out my arms to both sides as I tilted my face upwards, grinning and laughing as a gust of wind whistled through my clothes and ran searching fingers through my long blonde hair.

_I wonder, since the Dolls are all dead, can I yank out one of their hearts and chuck the disembodied bit over the side, and that'd count as a reference?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 8.40 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 30th, 2019, 10.01 AM USA Central Time


	39. That Butler, I, Frankenstein

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To note, the dialogue in the Atlantic arc is just a shade skewed, because sometimes the movie would have more sensible dialogue and sometimes the manga would, and since this is rendered without the need to pander to lip-flaps, I can change up the dialogue as much as I want to make it more comprehensible all-around. Usually, I stuck to the manga, but lines from the movie will work their way in here and there, mostly in the scene with Undertaker and the other Grim Reapers. Fair warning.

Arya's POV:

Bright lights that barely even flickered in the stillness of the enclosed lounge. Gleaming marble floors, and wrought-iron staircase railings in delicate spirals and decorative scrollwork, gilded slick and shiny on the top. An imposing glass skylight, glittering in the bright yellow light. The area thronged with quietly murmuring nobles, old money, blue bloods, the aristocracy, their movements languid and slow, their voices carefully modulated and even. Jewels sparkled on white necks and wrists, or gleamed on fingers and Albert chains. Ruffles of silk, of damasked linen and muslin in rich, vibrant colors, rustled softly as the owners moved and gestured, and gleaming black suits pressed to perfection swelled as the men inhaled to pontificate. Hair was neatly combed back or upswept in elegant brands crowned with feathers or tiny hats, barely larger than pillboxes.

And amidst it all stood the American teenager, hair down, wearing a baggy sack of a brown dress, and attempting not to be too obvious in her discomfort.

Two days after boarding, within the First Class Lounge, I sighed, tugged at my collar, and tried not to feel too self-conscious in my plain, unadorned, and to be admitted rather ugly dress. Given as I knew that this ship was going to sink less than three days into the voyage, I hadn't bothered to bring more than the barest bare essentials, which meant A) no literary entertainment in any form and B) bringing as few and as ugly clothes as I could get away with, chiefly by buying from some shabby second-hand dressmakers. Which also meant wearing this particular semi-shapeless dress, with a T-shirt and some flexible pants on underneath, and my Colt and as many rounds of ammunition as I could carry without impeding my mobility. Also a knife, because better safe than sorry.

Which meant that I stood out like a sore thumb.

I could catch jewel-colored eyes gleaming brightly at me, usually swiftly hidden by lacy fans whenever my head moved in their direction, and tinkling laughter drifting on the faint, irregular gusts of air borne by the full skirts of swishing gowns, and knew with the bone-deep certainty of any gossipee that the surrounding ladies were all talking shit about me behind their dainty Victorian fans.

 _Fuck 'em,_ I thought, savagely forking some Scottish salmon from my plate and putting it in my mouth. _Let's see who's politely tittering when you get torn apart by undead abominations later tonight. Who's laughing now, eh?!_

I did pause a moment to shudder blissfully at the taste of my salmon, though. Whoever cooked for these people was _good_. It was almost too bad that I had to save myself for light snacking only, not wanting to run and fight and all that on an empty stomach, but also not wanting to be weighed down by a stodgy meal.

Thus, lots of protein. Thus, delicious salmon.

I could see Ciel, some distance off, being smothered once more by an eagerly-chattering Lizzie, who was dragging him hither and yon with all the enthusiasm of a puppy and their very first chew-toy. Ciel looked a little worn down from days of gossiping with the other nobles, and I remembered vaguely him complaining vehemently to Sebastian about their inane conversation somewhere around this time in the manga.

I frowned in judgment at my now-empty plate, wondering if I should try for more food or halt my gluttony while I still could. After a moment, I decided to err on the side of caution and stop now, since, hypothetically, I could always snatch some food up later, in between running for my life and so on. I doubted eating would be high up on the list of the soon-to-be panicked horde of passengers.

Thus thinking, I stashed my plate, then went over to hover by a wall and watch the room, my eyes half-lidded as I languidly people-watched the swirling crowd of Victorians.

There was a tap of someone's footstep behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Snake approaching nervously, a delicate white-china cake platter –with cake– in his hands. "You don't mind if we join you? –asks Donne." he said shyly, a tiny snake waving underneath his ear with the rest of its body lying hidden, curled subtly under the collar of his suit, and I shrugged, stepping to the side with a companionable smile.

"Never do, dude. All these fancy prancing peacocks making you nervous?" I asked him with a playful nudge of my elbow, nodding my head to the nobles before us, and he ducked his head.

"We look very strange in this place –says Donne." he mumbled bashfully. He scuffed one patent-leather shoe against the gleaming floor.

>"'There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams.'" I quoted, and he smiled briefly, looking back up at me.

"That's Edgar Allan Poe, _Masque of the Red Death_ –says Donne." he replied. "Why don't you try something hard, for once? –he asks."

"Why don't you stop being so smug about having a photographic memory, huh?" I complained, sticking out my lower lip in a pout. "It was all I could do to remember those lines in the first place."

He laughed a little, and his posture uncurled a little bit more.

"You been having a nice trip?" I asked after a small pause, and Snake shifted a little from foot to foot.

"It's hard, having all the others be belowdecks in the cargo hold –says Donne." he said sadly. "Snake tries to help by bringing down coals from room, but it's still very cold down there, he sighs."

I patted his upper arm sympathetically. If I dared, I would've slung my arm around his shoulders in the same spirit, but I was half-certain Snake would fall into a dead faint at my forwardness and I would be tackled by the waitstaff for public indecency, what with snuggling a male I was not related to and all that. If nothing else, this sojourn into _Black Butler_ had educated me on period manners with a vengeance.

"It'll all work out, dude. Maybe you guys can bask in the greenhouse when we get back?"

Snake's expression grew fuzzy with bliss. "So warm…" he hummed in dreamy reminiscence, eyes drooping shut. "This food is tasty here, though, says Donne. We would never imagine to have been invited onto such a ship –he adds."

"It's…something." I agreed lamely. As previously mentioned, there wasn't a fraction of the _panache_ and _decadence_ that this ship held in any of the modern equivalents I had ever used or seen –though, then again, that may have been because I had neither the means or motive to fly Super-Deluxe-Richboy-Supreme on a modern flight. They might _still_ decorate like this, only with the added gloss of "vintage" to pile on more shiny layers of privilege.

Another one of life's great mysteries that I would probably never get to figure out.

"Miss Thompson." Ciel said, approaching from the crowd with Sebastian in tow –and no Lizzie. I was suddenly glad I had disposed of my plate. "The meeting with our previously-discussed clients in the Aurora Society is scheduled _very soon_. Care to join us?"

I blinked. "Uh, yeah, sure, give me a second."

Ciel nodded and glided away, jet-black butler on his heels. Snake and I turned to one another.

"This cake is very good. We're going belowdecks to share it with the others –would you like to come along with? –says Donne." Snake offered, and I opened my mouth, only for Ciel to beckon me from the staircase.

"Miss Thompson, come along. We will need your…field experience…for the meeting."

"Uh, sorry. Rain check?" I offered, starting to turn, and Snake nodded with a patient, slightly shy smile.

"We will see you later –says Donne. Perhaps you could recommend us some more American authors at that time?"

"Sure thing dude!" I said over my shoulder, waving, before I joined up with a vastly impatient Ciel and a much more subtly aggrieved Sebastian as the three of us started ascending the stairs in pursuit of a waiter with an empty tray.

"What are you and he getting so congenial over, anyways?" Ciel scoffed as we strode briskly down the hallways, purposeful but hopefully not obviously in pursuit, Sebastian on point, and I blinked, then snorted a little. Snake was a nice person, but not really my "type" –and sadly a lot of his little friends still gave me the willies. (Pluswhich it was _far_ too Mary Sue of me to fall for someone anime and fictional.)

"Books. He's really well-read, did you know that? I mean, all his snakes are named after famous authors. We talk about British and American stories, swap favorite authors, that kind of thing." I said matter-of-factly, and Ciel huffed.

"My servants spend time talking about literature when they should be _working."_ he said disdainfully. "I might have known."

"A little more quiet, please: we _are_ trying to tail this man, not alert him to our presence." Sebastian murmured from ahead of us, with dreadful patience in his tone, and Ciel and I fell silent.

"We're attempting to infiltrate the Aurora Society meeting on this vessel, as they are the ones supposedly resurrecting the dead through Karnstein Hospital. I don't suppose you've learned how to disguise us, eh?" Ciel muttered a few minutes later as we sauntered through the soft-carpeted hallways, and I shook my head. "Brilliant." he sighed, and Sebastian held up an arm as we all rapidly came to a stop.

"I shall provide the disguises, my lord, if that would suit." he said, and extended his arm as he turned towards us swiftly. There was a flap of fabric from his tailcoat, and suddenly a sensation of air on my neck and weight on my head made me jump. I lifted my hands to find out by feel that my hair had just suddenly been bound up and tucked under a brown, curly-haired wig that came my shoulders. Ciel's eyepatch had been either replaced or covered by bandages, and he wore an chin-length wig of smooth, straight, light blonde hair. Sebastian had either grown his hair out or summoned a wig of his own, tying it back in a long tail with a wide black ribbon.

_Man, a demon's conjugation powers really are something._

We all peeked casually around the corner, seeing that our target had come to a halt in front of the First Class Smoking Lounge. "Would you care for some _'Absolute Purification Water'?"_ one of the doormen asked him, holding up a crystal pitcher. "It costs thirty pounds."

"I shall have a glass." our target responded airily, and Ciel scoffed.

"Hmph. What an outrageous price for water." he muttered. "So in other words, those who cannot pay do not have the right to enter." He squared his shoulders and started forward. "Right, let's go."

"A moment, please." Sebastian said, catching him by the shoulder and pulling him back. "According to my information, the Aurora Society has a prescribed form of greeting, and those who do not know it are expelled." he rattled off as Ciel faced him, and the earl huffed, eye narrowing.

"Tell me about these details sooner!" he barked irritably, sounding exasperated.

"So, what kind of greeting is it?" I asked, knowing _exactly_ what it was and figuring we might as well get the nonsense over with on schedule.

"You see…" Sebastian said quietly, then leaned in closer to us to impart the secret.

"-wha?! I can't believe this! We really have to do that?!" Ciel spluttered, and Sebastian gave him a long-suffering look.

"If we cannot greet them as required, we will be regarded as outsiders and made to leave on the spot. Hesitation will not be tolerated." he said evenly, then straightened and gestured towards the doors. "Now, then. Let us go."

I conspired to throw a cheery, empty-headed wave at the two guarding the door, trying to mimic the typical spritely Victorian marriage pawn, as Sebastian accepted a thirty-pound glass of water on our collective behalf –probably as he was obviously the oldest male. "This way, please." the waiter said after it was poured, he and his fellow smoothly opening the doors before us as we stepped into a room full of quietly murmuring people in aristocratic fancy-dress.

"Is this your first time here?" A portly gentleman asked us almost before we had gotten four steps into the room, looking down through his opera glasses at me and Ciel, who threw a _"are you serious"_ look at Sebastian. The demonic butler nodded grimly, and Ciel turned back to the gentleman.

"Th…the eternal flame in this breast-" he began uncertainly as a bright gleam entered the gentleman's eye.

"-cannot be quenched by anyone. We are-"

"PHOENIX!" Ciel, Sebastian, and I shouted as we struck a pose not unlike the stereotypical Crane of martial arts, only with our knees half drawn out to the sides instead of posed in front. I flushed a little as I did it, because it was embarrassing to do it in person even if it was absolutely hysterical to watch in the manga.

There was a long, awkward pause as Ciel's face slowly turned darker and darker red in embarrassment, before the portly gentleman struck an identical pose with a shout of "PHOENIX!"

"Welcome to the Aurora Society." he said as he put his foot back down again and fished in his pocket. "Here are your membership badges." he added, holding three golden pins that to my modern eye looked slightly reminiscent of the Hunger Games pins, only that there was a phoenix with spread wings instead of a bird holding an arrow. I took one from Sebastian, before he knelt to pin another on the fuming, red-faced Ciel's chest, then attended to himself.

"…guh! Hee hee hee! Eeee hee hee hee!"

The cracked, wheezy giggle made me jump and whip around, to see the Undertaker in the midst of violent hysterics. "That was brilliant! I never imagined you'd do such a thing!" he chuckled, before collapsing again as Ciel's singular remaining eye widened.

"U-Undertaker?!" he gasped, and the long-haired man managed to compose himself for a few moments.

"You looked so very earnest when you shouted _'Phoenix!'_ Dah-hah-hah!" he gasped, then another fit of giggles overcame him. He was laughing so hard I saw tears, even.

"Why you-!" Ciel barked in outrage, clenching his fist, before Sebastian put a hand on his shoulder.

"Now now, young master…" he cautioned, before looking up at Undertaker again. "That being said, why are you here?"

"For work, you see!" the Undertaker chirped, tilting his head as he drew his sleeve-covered hands up to his chest in a pose that reminded me oddly of a preying mantis. "Hospitals are valued clients of mine!"

 _My god, that says something for the skills and work ethic of the average 19th century doctor._ I thought morbidly, a sweatdrop forming on the back of my head.

"We're investigating illegal human experiments that are said to be conducted by this hospital." Ciel whispered as he moved a little closer. "Would you happen to know anything about the dead being resurrected?"

"Dear, dear!" the Undertaker murmured, stroking his chin. "If it's information you want, I must have "compensation" –by which I mean "laughs"– for it! How 'bout you do that pose for me one more time, hmm?" he asked with a cheeky, nigh-on maniacal grin, and Ciel gaped in outrage.

"What do you take me fo-" he began to roar, but was interrupted by an elegant, fluting call from behind him.

"PHOENIX~! Do excuse me for adapting the pose to suit my style~" the Viscount of Druitt cooed as I could practically _feel_ the flowery explosions of anime roses behind him, and Ciel went from red to dead white in less time than it would take for Grell to spot a hot male.

"Isn't that Viscount of Druitt!? What is he doing here…?" he whispered in horror, and Sebastian deadpanned.

"If memory serves, he did have a physician's license. It had utterly slipped my mind…" he murmured, and Ciel flinched as the aristocratic blonde spotted us and started strolling leisurely in our direction.

"He's coming this way!" the young Phantomhive hissed, and hid behind Sebastian's comparatively broad back as I gave an uneasy, sheepish smile.

"Oh, I say! Are you three newcomers here?" the viscount asked pleasantly as he dinged glasses with Sebastian, who had recovered his usual aplomb.

"Indeed we are." he replied smoothly. "We chanced upon the newspaper article, you see…"

"Oh, Madam Samuel's loose lips will cause us no end of grief!" Druitt sighed as he theatrically pushed some of his floaty, sparkling blonde hair away from his forehead. "To think she would reveal our secrets so readily!"

I bit down on my lower lip to keep from exploding into snickers.

"Ohh, and who do we have here? Two _shy_ little ones." the viscount said playfully, and I pressed my mouth even tighter closed, trying not to take the same path of hysterical laughter as the Undertaker had before. "Have you and I had the pleasure of each other's company before?" Druitt added as he peeked around Sebastian's back to see Ciel, who jumped.

"No sir! We are meeting for the first time, I assure you!" he blurted frantically, and the viscount tenderly cupped the earl's chin, leaning uncomfortably close to his face.

"Quite right. I would never forget the face of a boy as beautiful as you." he murmured. "Ooh, but what heartbreaking bandages…"

"F-F-F-F-F-F-Father said they would make me better if I came here." Ciel said thinly, clearly freaked out beyond all mention, and the viscount smiled as Sebastian raised a mute _"Did you just refer to me as your parent?"_ eyebrow from behind him.

"Without a doubt Rian will surely cure you, and your lovely sister's lung problems as well~" Druitt trilled, unaware that my shaking and wheezing –and the fact that I was about to suffocate due to lack of oxygen– was caused by suppression of completely inappropriate laughter, not tuberculosis. "I shall be eagerly awaiting the day when I am able to gaze into both of your eyes…"

He suddenly let go and spun away, however, touching his forehead theatrically once more, "No, hang on, the way he is now gives him a rather decedent air, which has its own charms…"

"Nn? Where did the Undertaker go?" Ciel asked as he looked around, freed from the viscount's attention, and I shrugged, hand over my mouth, as I rapidly tried to compose myself.

"I wonder what brought him here in the first place?" Sebastian mused aloud, before Druitt pounced on all three of us.

"Hold it, you lot! The show's about to start!" he said excitedly, dragging us up through the front of the crowd as I saw four men bringing a closed casket to the white-draped table that had apparently been set up for that purpose earlier.

A shiver slid down my spine, and I sobered quickly as we were pushed/hauled up to the very forefront of the crowd. Nothing's more alarming, or serious, than the idea that you're about to witness a (basically) zombie resurrection from front row, center stage, after all.

Or that the entire ship you're on would be very shortly overrun by more of the same.

I gulped as Druitt languidly pointed out the burgundy-eyed brunette man onstage. "He is Rian Stoker, the founder."

"So that's…" Ciel murmured to himself, and the crowd fell respectfully silent as Stoker folded his arms behind his back.

"The eternal flame in this breast cannot be quenched by anyone. We are PHOENIX!" he shouted, striking the god-awful pose as I sighed and folded my arms. I could feel the beginning edge of my knife's handle, stashed up the baggy sleeve of my dress, and the touch of the polished wood was inversely comforting proportionate to its small size as Rian continued to speak.

"Esteemed friends and colleagues! I thank you for attending the Aurora Society's research presentation, _'Absolute Salvation of Mankind Through Medical Science,'_ on this fine day. What's Absolute Salvation, you ask? Well, it's perfect health!" he shouted excitedly. "A healthy body. Healthy teeth. A healthy mind residing in a healthy body. And heathy weather. Good health is indeed a many-splendored thing!" he added, striking a series of poses as Ciel and Sebastian made disgusted faces.

"However, there continues to exist a state of greatest, most profound unhealthiness that we are unable to conquer, try as we might! And what is that state?" he asked rhetorically, placing one hand on the coffin. "It is death!"

I gulped, a bead of sweat tailing down my jaw as Ciel and Sebastian both straightened. Pushing my fingers further into my sleeve, I wrapped them around the handle of my knife, knowing that from any other perspective it would seem like I was folding my arms for warmth.

"And the wonderful, singular power that will save us from this calamity? That is…the medical science of the Aurora Society! Now I shall demonstrate to you the fruits of our research –the _'Absolute Salvation of Mankind Through Medical Science'!"_ Stoker continued proudly as two men lifted the lid off of the casket. He gestured to the body inside. "Here lies Margaret Conner, age seventeen. She lost her young life in an unfortunate accident. Her death was truly tragic… the result of a catastrophe that should never have occurred. Her untimely end brought ill health not only upon her own heart, but also upon the hearts of her loved ones. I wish to absolutely save this young lady and her family!" he shouted, gesturing to an elderly couple dressed all in black as I winced imperceptibly and tightened my grip on my knife.

"Is the corpse real?" Ciel whispered to Sebastian, putting a hand over his mouth to avoid his whisper carrying, and Sebastian sniffed, before crinkling his nose and subtly holding his curled fingers up to it as though he had smelled something disgusting.

"I believe so. There is a lingering scent of death causing my nose to wrinkle." he muttered as several attendants began pressing nodes connected to wires onto the bare skin of the corpse's chest, and Ciel turned his cold blue eye to me.

"What about you? Is there any "magic" being preformed here?" he asked in an undertone, and I shook my head definitively.

"Nothing but a sense that this is all gonna go pear-shaped real fast, real soon." I murmured back, and Rian waved to the crowd.

"Allow me to show you, everyone! The power of medicine! Absolute Salvation!" he cried, throwing a switch as bolts of electricity flowed towards the corpse and more chills shuddered down my back. It was oddly surreal: here I was standing on a ship decadently covered in period Victorian fashionings, surrounded by authentic 19th-century British aristocracy, watching a corpse be zapped back to life like something out of a smashup horror movie –and yet when I looked to either side, there was Ciel and Sebastian, faces alternatively shadowed and flashing with light, _familiar_ anime/manga faces that I had seen for years and eaten all manner of snack foods geeking over, standing right there next to me large as life and twice as natural, as the saying went.

The arcs of electricity stopped, and I gulped again, loosening my knife in its sheath. "Now rise anew from the ashes, my dear!" Rian said dramatically. "Like a phoenix!"

The chalk-white hand of the corpse lifted, placing itself on the lip of the coffin, and the crowd burst into new wave of excited murmurs.

_And so it begins._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 8.47 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: August 31st, 2019, 8.51 AM USA Central Time


	40. That Butler, Jump Scare

_Arya's POV:_

"Please, take a good look! Our medical science can overcome even death!" Rian said proudly as the corpse of what had once been Margaret Conner slowly, stiffly sat up, and her parents rushed to embrace her.

"Maggie! Oh, Maggie, my sweet child!"

"Thank you so much, Doctor!"

"This is Absolute Salvation!" said the good Doctor Stoker to the crowd, beaming in a self-satisfied sort of way as they cheered and began to clap. Sebastian and Ciel looked on, dumbfounded, as I swallowed the spit pooling in my mouth in the way it sometimes did when I was about to throw up. _Magically_ speaking, there wasn't much wrong with the corpse, other than a perverted and jarring sense of _displacement_. However, on a level deeper than conscious thought, perhaps deeper than instinct, something in me said that this _thing_ –this Bizarre Doll, as they would come to be called– was _wrong_ , wrong right down to the blood, and wrong right down to the bone.

"What exactly is going on here?!" Ciel hissed as Sebastian put a hand to his chin. "Did a corpse really just come back to life!?"

The corpse slowly opened its mouth as her mother and father, unaware, kept babbling to it. "As long as you are alive, your mother-"

 **Crunch**.

The mother screamed as the Doll bit down ferociously on her neck. "M-Maggie?! What is the –ow!"

Like a monster in a horror movie, the Bizarre Doll forced Maggie's mother down into the casket, blonde hair spilling every which way as gruesome crunches and crackling echoed up from the silk-covered wooden confines. Blood spurted up over the sides of the coffin as the mother's hand, once draped over the Doll's back in an embrace, then a frantic hold, quivered and twitched like a dying insect's.

The crowd remained frozen in horror, perhaps too stunned by this sudden, terrifying change in the corpse's attitude, and as a result it took the Bizarre Doll, face and delicate white mortuary dress dripping crimson, actually starting to climb out of the casket towards them before the inevitable panic occurred. With manifold cries of terror that covered just about every octave in the spectrum, the nobles and doctors turned to flee: luckily for us, we were in the front of the crowd, as we were the only ones staying stationary and had we been in the back, we would have been trampled for sure.

"Sebastian!" Ciel shouted as he whipped off the bandages and wig, and I yanked off my own synthetic curls as my long blonde hair spilled out from underneath, pulling my heavy fighting knife from my sleeve in the same movement.

"Yes, my lord!" the demon butler replied, _his_ long-haired disguise gone on the spot, as he conjured up some of the Phantomhive family silver and whipped it at the corpse. The cluster of knives sank deeply into the Doll's chest, forcing its spine to curve backwards as it fell limply to the floor.

"Did you kill it?" Ciel asked, and Sebastian put a hand in front of the earl, protectively motioning him away.

"Step back, please." he said, and I took a step back with Ciel, whose face turned ashen as the corpse began to twitch, death-stiff joints and tendons creaking and cracking as it slowly bent itself upright again.

"Wha-?! What the devil is that thing?!"

"My knife ought to have pierced its heart." Sebastian said coolly, motioning Ciel back a little further as the Doll straightened completely and started staggering towards us with a rattling growl. "This is a being I myself do not quite comprehend."

"Nearest thing I know is a zombie." I said before Ciel could ask, taking the opportunity to twist up my hair one-handed and skewer it with some of the hairpins that had managed to hang on past my Dramatic Reveal© –because, after all, there was nothing more dangerous than long hair in a fight. "But this ain't one of 'em –especially since the mom's staying in the casket instead of getting up to join her."

 _"'Aurora Society's resurrection of the dead –occult it may not be.'_ I never for a moment thought what Lau said would turn out to be true!" Ciel said worriedly, and Rian Stoker, having stayed behind with two of his lackeys, scowled and gritted his teeth.

"Dammit! A failure, eh!?" he cursed as the Bizarre Doll gurgled and snarled low in its throat, more blood bubbling up from its mouth –from what, I didn't dare to guess, except that surely some of the flesh it had torn off from the mother must have slid down its throat…and that the vocalizations carried the ruined blood and tissue upwards. "What are you waiting for?! Kill it quickly." Rian snapped at his cohorts, who snapped into the ridiculous pose instantly.

"PHOENIX!"

Both of them pulled out guns and began to shoot at the Doll, of course having no effect but to tear away and gouge long funnels in the waxy flesh and make the creature even more grotesque.

It groaned, slowly swaying and creaking its way over to look at them. I was suddenly absurdly grateful for the lacy bit of black cloth over the eyes, because I really did _not_ want to see them, didn't want to see the filmy, vacant stare, or the eyeballs swirling wildly in their sockets, or worst of all, nothing there at all, the orbs plucked from the skull in some ghastly part of this horrific resurrection ritual.

And as per the night's horror-movie archetype requirements, both guards remained in place as the Doll staggered towards them, pouring round after useless round of bullets into her undead flesh, and were consequently quite helpless when the Doll loomed over them and their guns clicked empty. Stoker shuddered and flinched as it pounced on one of them, the other crawling away in animal terror. "Useless, the lot of you!" he shouted, bolting out the door as I switched grips on my knife and moved to go after him.

"Wait!" Ciel yelled after the doctor as we heard Stoker's footsteps receding down the hallway, but Sebastian checked us both with a hand. Ciel immediately redirected his gaze to the Doll as it finished with the first guard, tilting its head up at us, and I reluctantly conceded the point. "How in the world does one stop _that?!"_ he asked as I rejoined them, and Sebastian flicked out four more knives Wolverine-style.

"Perhaps it will do to dismember it into immobility for the time being?" he mused aloud, but before we could move to enact that plan, there was a loud _vrrrrm_ and a chipper voice from the doorway.

"You can't kill _these guys_ unless you smash in their heads!"

For one half-second, as the figure riding a lawnmower like a Segway zoomed past us and leaped up into the air, aiming the business end at the Doll's head, I thought it was America, from _Hetalia_. Then I remembered that he was still in _Hetalia_ , the figure before us had spoken with a British accent, and that his black suit and tie was far neater than anything America could have managed on even his best days. And his blonde hair had black highlights underneath, and his eyes were green, and his blonde cowlick bounced to the side of his forehead and not the center.

So this was Ronald Knox, then.

There was a nasty, cracking, grinding, splattering sound as the bladed end of the lawnmower met the Bizarre Doll's head. "Like so~" Knox grinned, pressing it down hard as the sounds intensified and his momentum pushed him forward. "Best leave this to the professionals, eh?"

The Grim Reaper hopped off of the corpse, a corpse again in truth, as it collapsed to the ground with a wet _splat_ , skidding his bloodied lawnmower around in a neat half-circle as he popped a tiny black notebook out of his suit.

"You are-" Sebastian began as Knox flipped urgently through his little book.

"Say what?" he muttered absently, then gasped as he came to the right page. "Ah! I knew it! This one's dead already!" he exclaimed to himself. "That's what I said, I reaped her soul 'n everything~! I can't freakin' believe this!"

"Who is that?" Ciel demanded of Sebastian, who narrowed his eyes at Knox.

"You should know his kind well, young master." he replied coldly, and Knox, who was either ignoring us or just blissfully very ignorant, hopped up onto the podium that still had the casket and the mother's corpse.

"A-ha, this one's still got a soul." he said happily, then popped his lawnmower up over the edge of the coffin with his foot. "Ups-a-daisy!"

I was disappointed, but not too surprised, that I couldn't see the woman's Cinematic Record as Knox began reviewing it to himself. "Susannah Conner. Born July 23rd, 1841. Died April 19th, 1889 of shock due to extensive hemorrhaging. Remarks –none in particular." He stamped something onto the open page of his notebook. "Judgment complete."

The penny _finally_ dropped for Ciel with that last comment, and he gasped. "A Grim Reaper?!" he said, far too loudly, and Ronald Knox blinked as he looked at us and hopped down from the table.

"Nn?" His green eyes studied us for several moments, and then he put one hand on the handle of his lawnmower and leaned against it, cocking his hip as he gestured at Sebastian with the other. "That butler outfit. Would you happen to be the infamous "Bassy"?"

"I very much loathe being addressed that way…" Sebastian said as he placed a hand on his chest. "…but I am indeed Sebastian Michaelis, butler to the house of Phantomhive. And you are?"

"Ronald Knox. Grim Reaper Dispatch, Retrieval Division." Knox said, making an airy little salute with his notebook. "Thanks for lookin' out for my senior!"

"Just now, you mentioned that these creatures cannot be killed unless you smash in their heads." Sebastian queried as he lowered his own hand from his chest. "Do you Grim Reapers know something of these incidents where the dead are brought back to life?"

"Nah, we haven't got any real details." Knox said with a sour, upward-pointed shrug. "But…we've had reports of corpses being active even after their souls were collected. Management's put in claims against us, treating the cases like the Retrieval Division screwed up, so I came to look into this. But…" He kicked his foot up on the lawnmower. "Turns out it's a soulless course through and through, this. I mean, I culled Margaret Conner's soul two weeks ago myself, no doubt about it."

"So, the dead have not been returned to life." Ciel mused, putting a hand to his chin. "It's _just_ a moving corpse. Hm…"

"Is it even possible for a body without a soul to move?" Sebastian inquired, and Knox threw up his hands in a self-defensive shrug.

"The brass says that it's impossible too, but the Grim Reaper Dispatch is investigating in the first place 'cos the corpses really are moving, just as you saw." he said patiently, and Sebastian frowned in contemplation.

"So all we know for sure at present is _'Destroy their heads to kill them'_ …" he mused into his fist, and Knox tilted his head.

"To be exact, you're not "killing" them, just "incapacitating" them." he corrected, and Ciel sighed.

"Looks like we've got to force a confession out of Rian. C'mon then!" he said briskly, and I kilted up my skirts and started to tromp after him.

A loud _vwrreem_ made the three of us turn, and Sebastian lunged in front of Ciel and caught Knox's lawnmower Death Scythe with both hands, inches away from disaster. "If Management gets wind of a devil being on board, it'll be a pain with them grousing on about how _'Perhaps you are concealing the fact a noxious beast snatched souls from you?'_ and stuff." Knox said as he strained to put the blades of his Death Scythe through Sebastian's skull, his conversational tone belying the murderous intent shuddering off of him in waves. "I really don't wanna get stuck with overtime for a reason like that, so how's about you disappear right here and now?"

"Tch!" Ciel glanced at the open doorway. "We're going on ahead! Once you've played with him a bit, Sebastian, come after me!" he ordered, and the two of us made our mutual exit posthaste. A bit of hasty inquiry from witnesses in both directions led us to the right, and as we scurried through the halls I took the time, between strides, to use my knife to alter my hem in the upwards direction –since it would be tactically unsound to strip the whole thing off entirely, as we'd be encountering people who'd surely be puzzled by my modern clothing, but also since I couldn't fight in a full-length dress no matter _how_ shabby it was.

We came to one of the service staircases, and I nudged Ciel as we saw a flash of movement whisk around the corner of a hallway that led to one of the cargo holds. "He's fast on his feet." Ciel murmured, holding his gun in a professionally-ready position as we moved cautiously down the stairs, me on point. On these metal staircases and stairwells, stealth was much better than speed –we didn't want to make it too obvious to Stoker that he was being followed.

I jumped as Ciel suddenly spun around with a cry, realizing with embarrassment that he had sensed the potential threat before I had –even though it was just Lizzie.

"Kyaaah!" she shrieked, and Ciel immediately lowered his gun.

"Lizzie?!"

"Good gracious, were you honestly going to shoot your fiancée?!" she gasped indignantly, and I gave voice to a quiet, heartfelt sigh. If Stoker knew anything about anything, he'd be long gone by now, what with all this shouting.

"Forget about that!" Ciel barked. "What are you doing here!?"

"I saw you run off, so I followed you." Lizzie chirped. "You suddenly disappeared when I'd asked you to wait, after all! I looked all over for you too!" she scolded, then brightened and held up a platter with a slice of cake on it. "Oh! And, and! Ciel, here's your ca- _mph!"_

"I'm sorry, but I haven't got time for you right now." Ciel said as he covered her mouth with his free hand. "It's not safe here, so go back to where Auntie and the others are. All right!?" he asked as he turned to dash around the corner, and I followed him quickly. After all, the faster we got all of this done, potentially the more lives that could be saved –and maybe we'd even be able to stop the ship from sinking, too.

_Doubtful, but a girl can hope._

As we rapidly sank down into the bowels of the ship, Ciel snagged an electric lamp from one of the nearby shelves, and held it aloft as he turned it on, motioning me to slow as we descended down the final flight of thin metal steps, onto the floor of the hold itself.

"So this is the cargo hold…" he murmured, raising it high as we peered into the gloom, seeing the netting-covered boxes stretching on endlessly past the small puddle of light created by the lantern, vanishing into the murky, mildew-scented darkness. "Stay alert." he added in a whisper, slowly panning the light around us. I nodded, and a rattling sound from nearby made us both jump.

"Who's there?!" Ciel shouted as he spun, raising the lantern, and the figure jerked, holding a hand up before its face to shield itself from the glare as Ciel gasped. "SNAKE?!"

"T-too bright… –says Wordsworth." Snake grunted, squinting his green slit-pupiled eyes almost entirely shut as Ciel belatedly lowered the lamp in courtesy.

"What on earth are you doing down here, of all places?!" Ciel demanded with an exasperated swipe of his gun, and Snake lowered his hand to the elegant white plate he was balancing on his knees.

"The food was so very delicious, I wanted to come and share it with everyone –says Donne." he offered simply, before a higher-pitched voice cut in.

"The cakes were much yummier than the food, you know!"

"Is that right…" Ciel sighed, then blinked. "Nn – _hey!_ Lizzie?!" he spluttered in shock and slight denial as he spun around, and I smiled and twiddled my fingers in a brief greeting beside him.

"Gosh, don't just leave me all alone like that!" she whimpered fretfully, holding the skirts of her dress up off the ground with one hand and the platter of cake high with the other.

"I told you to back upstairs, didn't I?!" Ciel retorted hotly, and Lizzie pouted.

"But I wanted you to eat your cake, so…" she said sheepishly. "It's your favorite kind, with the strawberries on top! And I brought you the biggest piece! See?" she asked as she lowered the plate and brought it out in front of her.

It was empty.

"Oh?" Lizzie blinked, looking at the cake-less porcelain surface as, behind her, a male Bizarre Doll loomed close, the untasted cake smeared in and over its mouth.

The rest of us gasped in horror, but it was Ciel who was galvanized into action first, lunging forward to pull Lizzie down and away as the Doll lurched forward, teeth clacking down where her hair had once been as she and Ciel fell against a stack of wooden crates with a loud _thump_. The electric lamp, discarded, crashed to the ground and rolled to spill it's brilliant light across the staggering corpse, the _clanging_ sound echoing and fading amongst the labyrinth of crates as the Doll gurgled low in its throat and shuffled forward.

"This one's not the same as the last! There were more of them?!" Ciel gasped in horror as he and Lizzie sat up, and in the pool of light shed by the lantern there was a flat gleam of metallic gold against dull red –another casket embossed with a very familiar phoenix symbol. "The insignia of the Aurora Society!" Ciel hissed, recognizing it almost at the same moment as I did. "So Rian brought another reanimated corpse along with him?"

He turned to Snake, who had been staring up into the darkness pensively as his serpent friends hissed and squirmed restlessly –clearly, they didn't like the Bizarre Dolls either. "Snake! Leave that one to me. You and Thompson take care of Lizzie!"

No reaction.

"Snake? Hey! Did you hear what I-"

Snake slowly pointed off into the darkness, fear shadowing his brow ever so slightly. "The mark of the bird…there are lots more of them over there –says…Oscar." he said with a gulp, and we looked, and saw rows upon rows of countless other Aurora Society coffins trailing off into the darkness.

And as if our eyes resting on them had been some kind of silent signal, the caskets began to rattle and bang as their undead passengers began trying to claw their way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 8.53 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 1st, 2019, 10.12 AM USA Central Time


	41. That Butler, Bram Stoker

_Arya's POV:_

The four of us stood frozen in terror, watching the caskets start to rattle and shake, and despite myself, I felt hysterical fear rising in my throat. I mean, even though half the horror –of anything– is fear of the unknown, and I knew exactly (more or less) how all of this would play out, that didn't make it any less terrifying as clammy, rotten hands began scraping and clawing and forcing their way through the cracks of the lids, shoving and snapping apart the fabric ties that held the lids on the caskets in the first place. Dozens of Bizarre Dolls tumbled to the ground or slid into half-kneeling, half-standing positions, as their eerie, dry groaning reached its peak.

_Time to exit, stage right-the-fuck-now._

"Dudes, let's _go!"_ I squeaked hoarsely, but only managed to take a half-step backwards myself as the instinctive panic threatened to freeze me in place and nail my feet to the ground, watching this grotesque parody of a crowd shamble upright. Luckily, that broke the others out of their respective terror-hypnosis, and the rustle of movement as Ciel, Lizzie, and Snake turned to flee was more than enough pack mentality to galvanize me into action as well.

"Run, Lizzie!" Ciel shouted as we all bolted towards the stairs we had come down earlier, only to stop as we saw another crowd of Dolls dragging themselves past it –towards _us_.

"They're at the exit as well…" the earl hissed, and Lizzie screamed as one of the Dolls hot on our heels lunged at her with a rattling growl. Ciel shoved himself in front of her protectively as he squeezed the trigger on his gun, dropping the Doll instantly as a neat hole appeared in its forehead and red exploded from the back of its skull, the corpse collapsing to the ground gracelessly.

We glanced around frantically, instinctively staying in a little knot as we edged away from the Dolls shambling to surround us. "Snake, take Lizzie and get on top of the crates! Hurry!" Ciel shouted as we came up against a tall stack, shooting another Doll in the head. I sheathed my knife –a fat lot of good it would do here– and pulled out my Colt, trying to let all the tension run out of me as I cocked the hammer back and aimed.

**Blam!**

_One down. Pull hammer back._

**Blam!**

_Miss. Pull hammer back._

**Blam!**

_Miss again. Pull hammer back._

**Blam!**

_Hit. Pull hammer back._

**Blam!**

_Hit. Pull hammer back._

**Blam!**

_Hit. Pull hammer back._

_Reload._

"Damn! There are too many of them!" Ciel hissed as I heard the barest edge of worry in his tone as well, and I grunted in response, jamming bullets into the chambers as fast as I safely could.

"CIEL!" Lizzie shouted from atop the crates. "BEHIND YOU!"

A Bizarre Doll lunged at us even as the words left her mouth and Ciel instinctively flinched away, putting an arm up as if to futilely ward off the impending teeth. The Doll's arm and clawing hand froze, however, not an inch away from Ciel's living flesh, and he squeezed open his eye. Snake's serpents had coiled around the Doll, forcing it to a halt, and Ciel blinked. "Those are…"

"Smile! Aryana! Come quick while we've got them tied up –says Oscar!" Snake shouted down to us, reaching out with one hand, and we wasted no time in scrambling up the clinging rope net to the very top of the crates. I gratefully breathed in the musty, dry, hay-and-earth scent of hemp and wood from the net and the crate, my fingers shaking just a little from where they curled around the butt of my gun and a line of rope. Considering all of my many and varied near-death experiences, this was definitely the scariest.

We took a few moments for a breather, watching the Dolls shuffle around the stack, their endless moans and groans blending into an ebbing, flowing tide of mindless undead hunger.

"It doesn't look like they can climb up here." Ciel said after a few minutes, carefully leaning over the edge of the crates to peer at the Dolls through the murky gloom.

"What are they?" Snake asked as his little friends seethed and slithered all over him and the top of the crate, restless and clearly uneasy. "Not only is our venom ineffective against them, but they reek something awful –says Webster."

"I'm unclear on the details, but they're corpses that are somehow being made to move." Ciel replied as he re-centered his weight away from the edge, and Lizzie gasped in horror.

"Corpses?!"

"They don't seem to possess anything even resembling intelligence." Ciel continued as though he had not heard. "And likely also neither vision nor a sense of pain."

"How can you tell? –asks Oscar." Snake replied in an undertone, and Ciel frowned.

"They had not the slightest reaction to your snakes. If they were able to see and feel pain, they would've tried to rid themselves of the snakes first. And…" He looked towards the completely unguarded stairs. "…if they had even a shred of intellect, they would know to leave us alone and make for the upper decks. They'd find much more food there, after all."

Lizzie gulped. "By f-food, you don't mean…" she squeaked in horror, and Ciel shot her a startled, somewhat guilty look.

"Ahem." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "That leaves their hearing. If they're dependent on their ears, we may be able to distract them with sound and make our escape from here." Ciel finished, and Snake lightly tapped the small dinner platter against his leg, which he had somehow kept ahold of this entire time.

"What do you say we test their ears by throwing this –says Emily." he suggested, holding it up.

Ciel nodded as we all moved to kneel upright, poising ourselves to –possibly– make a break for it. "Right, try giving it a toss." he said, and Snake lobbed the plate out in an underhand throw. I would have whistled, impressed, had sound not been exceedingly important here, as it landed with a satisfyingly crisp _smash_ on some crates –some ten feet distant to the back of the crowd of Dolls.

_Man, forget literature, we have to discuss forming a sports team._

"Well, so much for that…" Ciel sighed when it obviously had no effect, then put a hand to his chin as he clearly began to activate his first-rate puzzler. However, he was shaken out of his musings not two seconds later –literally– as the crate we were atop jolted and rocked, nearly throwing all four of us off balance. "What's going on?!" he shouted as Lizzie screamed and Snake and I just did our best to hold on. He gasped to himself as he peered over the edge again, gruesome crunches and crackling sounds rising up from the darkness beneath us –along with the groaning _creak_ of splintering and snapping wood. "They're using their teeth and nails?!"

 _This **is** just like a horror flick._ I thought with a morbid, detached sense of amusement, half-smiling placidly to myself even as the rest of my mind jumped into Maximum Overdrive Terror: Turbo Setting. After all, knowing exactly (or almost) what was going to happen didn't give me some kind of magic survival charm –I could still fall off the crates and be bitten to death, or break all my bones, or any one of a hundred other things that involved the plot that also had the ability to make this my last night on earth.

_Though if this will somehow end in or involve stereotypical reckless teenager sex, I swear to god I'm writing a formal complaint to **somebody**. I dunno who, but somebody. If this is a horror flick, it's black-and-white Dracula, classic Goth, or ritzy steampunk Victorian mashup. I accept no cheesiness in my possible death scenario: I'm going out like a goddamned Viking._

"Snake! Can't you stop them with your serpents?!" Ciel shouted as Lizzie clung to his arm, and Snake, who had fallen to all fours, the better to balance, shook his head.

"No way, not that many –says Oscar!" he said incredulously, and Lizzie whimpered and clung to her fiancé even tighter.

"C-Ciel!" she wailed, an he wrapped an arm around her.

"You will be fine." he said firmly. "Lizzie, you, I'll protect without fail…come whatever may!"

"How admirable of you, young master."

 _Oh fuck, **finally**._ I thought with a wheeze of relief, still clutching frantically onto the rocking, juddering crate as a storm of highly polished silver knives hurtled into the heads of the Dolls at the back of the crowd.

"That is just how an English gentleman ought to behave." Sebastian observed from the stairs, and for a moment, I almost thought the red-faced, molten-eyed Ciel was going to tell Sebastian just exactly where he could stuff his servile approval.

"Sebastian!" he finally roared, to my (slight) disappointment. "Don't just stand there! Hurry up and take care of them!"

"As you wish." the demonic butler replied smoothly, dashing towards the Bizarre Dolls. "This is a none-too-refined method, but if all that is required to destroy their heads-" He leaped up into the air, his white-gloved hand cupping the back of a Doll's head. "- _this way_ -"

I saw a flat, red gleam burst from the back of Sebastian's eyes as he smashed the Bizarre Doll's head to the ground, crushing the skull entirely with a gruesome _crunch_. "-is by far the most expedient!"

Ciel quickly pulled Lizzie's head against his chest, shielding her eyes from the unfolding carnage, and I threw a sidelong glance at Snake, who was watching Sebastian flay the corpses left and right with white, compressed lips. I wondered again just how much Snake _knew_ , or _guessed_ , about Sebastian's true species –though he was not going stripper-boots-and-black-shadows quite yet, there was nothing remotely human about the way Sebastian _moved_ or _fought_ right now, nor about the way his eyes glowed hellish red: the same way they had glowed when the venom of Snake's serpents had proved ineffective on him.

Ciel was looking on the same violent, bloody, and completely one-sided massacre with a thousand-mile stare, and I realized with a shudder that in the manga, he was recalling the first time he had seen Sebastian move like that –the first time Sebastian had killed in his name, under his contract as a demon and a butler, when he had destroyed the ones that brought him into the world by torturing Ciel and offering him up on a gilded platter as bait. Lizzie noticed the same thing, and began shaking him gently, then urgently, calling his name, when he did not respond.

"CIEL!" she shouted, and that finally did the trick as Ciel shaped out of his daze, looking down at her vacantly.

"Liz…zie." he responded softly, loosening his unintentionally tight grip on her arms.

There was a soft splash from below us in the echoing silence, like a footstep in a puddle, and the tap of someone's heel.

"All done, young master." Sebastian reported happily as we all looked over the side of the crate to see the floor –and Sebastian– literally awash with blood, the dismembered and headless corpses lying hither and yon like scattered, twisted, crushed leaves of flesh and bone. Ciel shuddered in disgust as I made a face and Snake's gaze became even more opaque. Lizzie nearly vomited.

"Is something wrong?" Sebastian asked casually, as if he did this sort of thing all the time. He held out his hands to us, hooding his eyes. "Now. Here, please let me help you."

Ciel's look of disgust smoothed over as he donned his nobility poker face. "Don't touch me with those hands. You'll get me dirty." he replied disdainfully as Sebastian lowered his arms and looked at his blood-smeared gloves.

"My apologies, sir. I shall change my gloves right away." he said, pulling a new pair from the inside of his miraculously clean pocket and tugging them on, just in time to catch Ciel around the waist and lower him to the ground –where his heels splashed wetly on the ebbing film of blood.

"Couldn't you have gone about it a little more gracefully?" the earl grouched, crossing one leg to peer down at the bottom of his soles as Sebastian aided Lizzie down in her turn. He turned his cold, disparaging eye on Sebastian. "You were like a beast."

"…please do forgive me, sir. It was a matter of some urgency, after all." Sebastian said as he made a cursory effort at helping me down –though since I was a lot taller than Ciel and Lizzie, I couldn't exactly fault him for not grabbing me around the waist and lowering me down in the same fashion. Even if it was clear he _still_ didn't like me, he was still _also_ playing the role of butler, which meant that though Sebastian would help me, he would only give the barest bare minimum required by gallantry and politeness and all those other stuffy British traits that the aristocracy –and their servants– practiced.

Which meant that all I got was a supporting hand, like someone alighting from a carriage –and it was strangely bizarre to take Sebastian's hand, for though it gave and bent and moved in the exact same way a human's might, there was something hard and detached and inhuman about his warm fingers; like steel covered by a mimicry of flesh.

"Moreover," Sebastian added as he helped Snake down in the same manner. "- _their_ bodies appear to be frailer than even that of the average human. They were quite fragile."

"But why are so many of them on this ship?" Ciel asked, putting an impatient hand on his hip, and Sebastian's gaze twitched to the left just barely.

"I believe…"

Four knives were sent flying off into the darkness, and we heard a _yelp_ and a thunk of wood. "…we had better put that question to him." Sebastian finished as we all tracked the path of the knives to see them embedded in a crate, quivering, forming a line that had blocked the sneaking path of-

"Rian Stoker!" Ciel barked, and the good doctor gulped. I didn't know how much he saw of what Sebastian did to the corpses –I was inclined to think not much, since the Dolls would have moved to attack him as well– but he clearly knew enough to be petrified of the black-clad butler as Sebastian strode primly towards him.

"N-no! Their Absolute Salvation was incomplete, and I never intended for them to reanimate in such unhealthy states…please just hear me out!" he babbled frantically, holding out a vainly forestalling hand as Sebastian moved closer. "We must hurr– _yow!"_

This last exclamation was wrung from him by Sebastian expertly grabbing and twisting the outstretched arm behind his back.

"There is no need to rush." the demonic butler said pleasantly. "We have plenty of time until we put in at New York, so we shall listen to your story at leisure."

"P-please wait!" Stoker blurted, squirming uselessly and clearly almost overcome by panic.

"For what?" Sebastian asked coolly. "I have gotten rid of them all."

"No, you haven't!" the doctor yelped, and Sebastian blinked once –the equivalent to a gasp of shock or a raised eyebrow in anyone else.

"Come again?"

"This ship utilities the latest reciprocating steam engines, and they and their massive boilers are installed in the center of the vessel. So this place is divided in two with the boiler rooms in the middle." Rian began, squeezing his eyes shut and talking very fast, as though he expected the entire ship to collapse in flames around him as he spoke.

"So what of it?" Ciel replied –clearly this was either old news to him, or he though it was completely boring, useless, and a waste of his time. Perhaps both, come to think of it.

"In other words, this ship has _two_ cargo holds, one in the bow and the other in the stern!" Stoker said frantically, opening his eyes. "And the hold in the bow has ten times as many tests subjects as the hold in the stern stored within!"

 _That_ snapped Ciel out of his apathetic coldness, that was for sure. "Did you say _ten times as many?!"_ he shouted as Lizzie gave a cry of fear and Snake swallowed hard. I gulped and tightened my grip on my Colt –which I had still neither let go of nor put away, amazingly.

"This is not good, young master." Sebastian said with an edge to his tone, and Ciel took a step towards Rian, brandishing his pistol furiously.

 _"Not good_ doesn't even begin to cover it!" he snapped. "One of those monsters is bad enough. And you're telling me there are still ten times as many as this?!"

"Well that's this horror-picture of a night going down the route of a late-night-slasher." I muttered under my breath –though luckily no one heard me except Sebastian, who did not respond. It was a good reference, even if I do say so myself. Too bad they couldn't appreciate it.

"Then the interior of the ship is most likely crawling with droves of them." the butler said heavily, and Lizzie squeaked, starting to shiver.

"Oh no…"

"Sebastian." Ciel said briskly, turning away from Stoker. "Go on ahead and get my aunt and family somewhere safe."

"And you, young master?" Sebastian asked with an arched brow. "What of you and Lady Elizabeth?"

"We'll only get in your way." Ciel responded as he reloaded his pistol with businesslike precision. "I do have my pistol, so we should be able to manage for a while."

One of the largest of Snake's snakes, the constrictor, slithered around Stoker's torso and arms as he shuddered in terror, effectively tying him up as Sebastian rushed off. "Return at once after you've secured their safety!" Ciel called after him.

"Very good, my lord." Sebastian replied, and then he was gone.

"Now then." Ciel said with an ominous air, turning back to Stoker and putting the small pistol against his ear. "Let's hear what you have to say, shall we? But keep it short. Patience is not one of my particular virtues. First, how do you handle _them?"_

"Eh?" the doctor gulped, and Ciel narrowed his eye.

"Surely you don't simply transport things as dangerous as they with no safeguards. Is there no other way to stop them aside from pulverizing their heads?"

"…w-well, yes, but…" Stoker mumbled, and Ciel correspondingly pulled his gun away just a little. Realizing, probably, that he had no choice but to spill his guts like the half-rotten ones all around us, Stoker began talking. "There does exist a device that can suspend the reanimation of the patients who have undergone Absolute Salvation by exposing them to special ultrasonic waves."

"And where is this device?" Ciel asked promptly.

"…in my room in first class." the doctor replied with a shudder, as the snake draped around his neck and coiled around his torso lowered its head and nosed around the buttons beneath his tie and collar.

"Take me to it." Ciel snapped, grinding the end of his pistol against Stoker's skull to remind him of the much more dangerous –if not louder– threat he had to face if he didn't cough up the goods for us.

"A-all right!" Stoker yelped, then half-turned and jerked his head at another aisle in the boxes. "We can get upstairs if we take the cargo lift in the boiler room back here."

"Let's use that." Ciel said, and lowered his gun –only to jab it against the small of Stoker's back, prompting him to move. We splashed our way out of the formaldehyde-scented pool of blood and scattered bits of tissue, bone, and flesh, walking in single file. Rian, since he had a gun to his back, walked in front, with Ciel right behind him, Lizzie behind her fiancé, Snake behind her, and me at the rear –though not quite, as Snake's menagerie of friends slithered after us through the shadows: a dry, eerie rustling of scales-on-wood –and plaster– that was somehow far less comforting than it probably should be, even though it was abundantly clear the snakes were on our side.

We also left a bloody trail of footprints, and I suppressed a shudder as I looked back behind us and saw the splattered smears winding off into the gloom and dark of the hold, all the more sinister for the fact that the five of us walking single file had left no clear and distinct footprints –just a bloody welter of stains.

"On to the next question." Ciel said, breaking the eerie silence as I almost jumped. "Why do the corpses move?"

Rian seemed quite happy to blather on about it –either he was genuinely proud of his work, or the void of silence had been getting to him too. Probably both –his voice was slightly higher and less even than it had been before, but he seemed very happy with his project…though definitely not the results.

"We preform a surgical procedure that embeds a unique device, one which generates mild electrical currents, into the brain of a deceased individual." he rattled off, and I made another wryly amused face from the back of the group as he continued talking. _And we've gone from the late-night slasher flick to something out of a period Gothic horror movie. 'Least we're back to the classics._

"That device then sends signals to each segment of the brain, which allows the subject to regain the sound, healthy body he or she possessed before being felled by deat-"

"That will do." Ciel snapped, cutting Stoker off as he clearly began to delve into the philosophy and not the schematics of his work. "Can a dead man truly be brought back to life that way?" He picked up his pace a little. "Let me revise the question. For what purpose are you bringing all these test subjects to America."

"That…I cannot say." Stoker said reluctantly.

"I see." Ciel replied with a faint sigh. He reached up to place the end of his gun against Stoker's ear, parallel to the line of his skull so that even if the bullet was a slug, it was unlikely to do anything but gouge a furrow in the flesh of his head. "You'd like to get your ears pierced nice and wide, is that right?"

"Eep!" Stoker flinched, though he did have enough sense not to duck his head or try to run away –though if he hadn't had a snake wrapped around him, I think he might've chanced it. "Wait, wait! If you shoot me, you realize you won't be able to use that special device of mine, don't you?!"

"Ugh, fine." Ciel sighed, shaking his head –then pressed the gun against Stoker's skull even harder, thumbing the trigger. "It's a pain, but it looks like we'll have to exterminate _them_ by obliterating their heads."

At that point, I think, Stoker understood the fundamental fact of the situation: he had no cards to play to make him the victor in this; for now he was useful, and held information that made him representative of a convenient shortcut, but his information was not _vital_ , and Ciel was perfectly willing and capable of killing him if –or _when_ , as I knew– he became too much trouble to deal with.

"O-our Absolute Salvation technology was bought by a certain company!" he blurted frantically, folding like a stack of cards.

"A certain company?" Ciel prompted, and Rian swallowed, perhaps tasting the bitter pill of tattle-tailing on his tongue.

"Yes…a company called Osiris, which is apparently in the business of developing a host of whole new drugs." he mumbled, and Ciel was silent as he indicated that we continue, probably mulling the whole thing over in his head. We came to a large, thick steel door, and Stoker indicated it with a jerk of his chin. "In here."

Snake stepped forward, and with his help Stoker was able to get the door open as a rush of hot, steamy, coal-scented air billowed out to greet us –the product of the boilers, turbines, and engines, all of which were thumping and churning away as they powered the ship forward.

"Snake, call your serpents off of Rian." Ciel murmured as we threaded our way through the massive machines. "Things will go more smoothly if we pretend to be his friends."

"Got it –says Webster." Snake replied, and the huge constrictor uncoiled itself from Stoker's torso and slid onto the ground.

"It so loud!" Lizzie complained, holding her hands over her ears as we penetrated deeper into the maze of clanging machinery. I saw a man in a cloth cap approaching us, and I quickly holstered my gun and tried to look innocent –or as innocent as anyone _could_ look with half-dried blood caked on the bottom of their shoes and a baggy brown dress whose slashed, tattered hem only came down to their knees.

"You there! This's no place for guests!" he barked firmly, but not angrily –he was just doing his job after all, and I could heartily agree with him: this was no place for people who didn't know crap about anything when it came to machines.

"The eternal flames in this breast!" Stoker said immediately, and the man blinked and narrowed his eyes.

"Cannot be quenched by anyone." he replied. "We are-"

"PHOENIX!" they both shouted, doing the dumb little pose in unison.

"Friend, please let me use the lift ahead." Stoker said when he came back down, and the man nodded briskly, feeling altogether like some in-game guardian whose test we had just passed. You know the ones, the ones that act so overly pompous, self-important, and absorbed in their task that you sometimes just run your little avatar in circles around them and make other various ridiculous motions at, depending on the range of in-game movement.

"Very well…and who do you have there behind you?" he asked, peering at us as Ciel flinched and paled, knowing exactly where this was heading.

"They're friends of the society too!" Stoker covered, flapping a hand at us. I got the distinct impression he was laughing on the inside. "Now then! It's your turn!"

"PH-PHOENIX!" our little quadruplet shouted immediately as we snapped up into the stupid ass pose, Lizzie and Snake a heartbeat behind me and Ciel, being as they were only copying us and probably had not the faintest clue of what we were doing or why.

"It's right back here!" the man said happily, obviously without any misgivings now, as Ciel fumed, red-faced, and Lizzie fluttered over him in concern, obviously unaware of what shamed him so.

"What's wrong, Ciel?"

"Come along!" the engineer, or whatever he was, called from up ahead, and Ciel quickly brushed off his embarrassment –probably not wanting Stoker to get too far out of sight– and followed as the rest of us trotted along with him.

If the cargo hold had been reminiscent of a creepy-ass Bram Stoker novel, or a slasher film studio, then the turbine and boiler rooms that the man led us through reminded me of nothing so much as the innards of the submarine from the Disney movie _Atlantis, the Lost Empire_ –though I may have gotten the timeline slightly off.

_"–I've led...stolen…the most powerful force in human history…nutjob…who's probably gonna sell it to the **Kaiser**! Have I left anything out?!"_

_"Well, you did set the camp on fire and drop us down that big hole."_

Absently recalling what fragments of Milo's hysteric speech at the tail-end of the middle of the movie that I remembered, I realized that I _was_ off by a few decades in my comparison –Kaiser Wilhelm, the more-or-less propagator of WWI, came along in the 1900s and so on. Still, boilers and whatnot looked fundamentally alike, so I figured it was an apt scenery comparison all the same.

_And this ship is going to go down to an identical watery grave. Neato._

The sharp, pungent, chemical-y scent of coal and soot, of hot metal and burning cinders, grew stronger as we walked, and the air grew hotter, to the point where I was perspiring a little under the collar, and the fine strands of hair not captured by my sloppy pinning stuck to my face. We began meeting more and more rough-dressed men in hard-wearing suspenders and white linen shirts turned grey with dirt and washing, smeared with coal, as we moved farther and farther into the mechanical heart of the ship, but our guide smoothed everything out whenever someone asked questions without breaking stride. I, for one, felt slightly nervous at the direction we were going; to my understanding, the cargo holds were on both sides of the ship, with this –the turbines, the boilers, and all the rest of it– in the middle. The one we had exited, the one we were heading away from, was empty of flesh-rending corpses.

The one that was full, that had ten times as many, was the one we were heading towards, and I had no idea how accessible or otherwise these boiler rooms were to the cargo holds. We, at least, had gotten into them from one end, so it made logical sense that the same thing could be done on the other end –even though it hadn't happened in the manga.

As we entered another room, which a soot-smeared plaque had proudly announced was the Second Boiler Room, there was a sudden, far-off _rumble_. It sounded like tearing steel or the rusty iron hinge of a crane: a clanging, grating _screeeech_ of metal-on-metal like nails on a chalkboard that vibrated into one long, heart-stopping note that created a frisson of fear in the heart of the listener and set their teeth on edge, to hear the impending doom of one of mankind's greatest and strongest artificial edifices.

The deck shook violently underneath our feet in time with that distant, thunderous sound of rending metal, and Ciel, in his heels, fell to his knees, along with several other less-well-balanced crew members. I stood there, my legs shaking as I tried to keep my balance, eyes wide as I realized what must have just happened.

_We've been hit! The iceberg! Grell! Ronald Knox and that poor girl from third class! The iceberg! Grell making Knox do the Titanic movie thing with him in the bow of the ship!_

_The **fucking iceberg that's going to make us sink**!_

"What was that tremor just now?" Ciel asked in concern, getting to his feet. Another plot point abruptly clicked into place, and I realized what was going to happen as the last of the rumbling fell away. Whirling away from the right side of the ship, the one closest to Ciel, I grabbed for his fiancée's wrist.

"Lizzie!"

It was an idiot's move, and if I survived this I was going to be kicking myself for it later. As I turned towards her, the steel bulkhead burst, sending torrent of water spraying over the workers –and us– with all the thwarted force of the Atlantic's ice-cold water pressure. With my weight leaning forward –one foot preparing to leave the ground– I was probably the most ill-balanced in the entire room to stand firm against that explosive wave, and as a result it plowed both Lizzie _and_ me off of our feet, to sweep us off across the room. Salt water got up my nose and in my mouth, stinging and burning, and I cried out through the choking compress of water as the back of my head –and my right shoulder– cracked against what felt like one of the boilers. Coughing, head ringing, I half-splashed, half-crawled upright, grabbing the offending boiler to drag myself to my feet as a bell started ringing and our guide started shouting.

"This alarm, it means _the watertight doors're closing!"_

 _And now an ode to the universe, composed by me, titled Fuck You, You Fucking Piece of Shit._ I thought as I grimly slogged through the water, squirming out from the two machines I had been wedged between.

"Hurry! Else you'll get locked in!" the man shouted to Ciel, who was looking back in our direction, as he pushed a clearly panicking Rian Stoker through the closing door.

"Lizzie!"

"Ciel! Wait!"

Her ankle-length, rich blue dress dragged at the water as she went; even accounting for my bigger stride, I was still twice as fast as she was, and was even with her in seconds, grabbing her by the arm and trying to help her pull forward. We were just too far away from the doors, though: I might've made it if I abandoned her and ran all-out, but there was just no way in hell that was happening.

"It's too late, lad!" the man said, obviously agreeing with me, so he pulled a struggling Ciel through the almost entirely-closed door.

"LIZZIE!"

**WHOOM.**

**CLANG.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 9.06 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 1st, 2019, 10.17 AM USA Central Time


	42. That Butler, Thriller

_Arya's POV:_

"Oh supreme master, lord of all you survey, you are an _idiot."_ I said flatly, dropping my servile tone on the last few words as Ciel slogged through the ice-cold water towards us, teeth gritted. The only noise aside from that was the sound of pounding fists from the closed door behind him, and in here, the waist-high –for them– and the hip-high –for me– sloshing of the water and the steady gushing as it poured through the cracks.

"Ciel, why?!" Lizzie blurted, clearly in agreement, as he came even with us, and Ciel took a step forward with a splash.

"I promised I'd protect you without fail, didn't I?" he barked back, and grabbed her hand as he turned to the doors. "You all go on ahead!" he said as the pounding came to a stop.

"I can't possibly leave you here –says Emily!" came Snake's frantic voice from behind the door, and Ciel turned this way and that, the water sloshing as it climbed higher up our bodies. He spotted a grate on the upper catwalk as I made a face, trying not to feel either too old or too fat –but it was going to be a squeeze for me, that was for certain-sure.

"Don't worry about us. We'll use the duct to escape!" Ciel shouted through the door as he began to help Lizzie drag herself through the water over to the stairs. "Your _friends_ shouldn't be in cold water for too long, isn't that right?!" he added, pitching his voice to carry through the six inches or so of solid steel. "Now go!"

There was a pause, and I heard an echo of movement from the air duct as we slogged towards it. "Smile!" Snake called through the door again. "Keats will guide you through the duct! So let's meet later –says Emily!"

"Yes! Later! For sure!" Ciel called as he grabbed onto the handle of the staircase with one hand, still not letting go of Lizzie's hand with the other. "Quickly!" he said to the two of us as, freed from the drag of the water, he bolted up the steps with Lizzie close behind and me almost ambling along in the rear –after all, my legs were much longer than theirs and I probably could've jumped right over the two of them if I tried hard enough.

We got to the grate without incident, and Ciel let go of Lizzie's hand. Using a bit of piping to boost himself up, he popped the grate on the duct, which impressed me somewhat –it didn't seem like the sort of thing the pampered earl would know how to do. "Lizzie!" he called, and she started forward.

"Yes!"

"First take those clothes off!" he commanded bluntly, and I suppressed the completely inappropriate urge to make a reference to _Supernatural_ –most notably, Dean's _"How do you want to spend your last night on earth?"_ self-admitted best pickup line…though this _technically_ wouldn't be their last night, if everything went according to canon.

"N-no!" she squeaked, clutching her hands to her chest as if burned.

Ciel was clearly reaching the end of his tether. "Don't be so selfish!" he snapped. "You'll never get through here with that skirt o-"

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Lizzie screamed, crying a little. "I want to stay cute in front of you until the very end, Ciel!"

 _Definitely reaching the end of his tether._ I thought with a morbid humor as Ciel jumped down from the piping and grabbed the back of her dress, ripping it open.

"Ciel?!" Lizzie gasped. "What are you doing!? No-"

"If you die here, you'll never be able to wear your favorite clothes again!" Ciel all-but-screamed at her, letting go of the ruined shreds of the back of her dress. "If you die, that really will be the end! The end of everything!"

There was a moment of silence, Lizzie hiccuping a little as she continued her crying. "I'm…sorry…" she whimpered, and in a splendid display of British gallantry, Ciel pulled off his coat and put it around her shoulders.

"I'll have Nina make you a new dress." he said, more quietly. "One that's even lovelier than what you're wearing today. So please…"

"No, Ciel." Lizzie snuffled, wiping the tears from her eyes in a dainty lady's movement of her fingers. "I'm sorry for being so selfish."

"I'm sorry I was so rough with you."

"And I'm sorry I have to die because of two thirteen-year-olds." I said sardonically, not as quietly as I could've, and Ciel turned to shoot me a nasty look.

"Now, let's hur-" he began, then started coughing and hacking in what I recognized as a brief asthma attack.

"Ciel?!" Lizzie gasped, but he quickly shook it off.

"It's nothing. I just choked on some water." he said, lying effortlessly. "Now hurry up and start climbing!"

"Follow the snake." I said as she moved to crawl into the ducts first, and Lizzie gave squeak and a light shudder as her shoes and stockings disappeared into the vent.

"You couldn't have phrased that more delicately?" Ciel grumbled as he moved to start crawling in after her, and I raised an eyebrow, moving to catch his heel when it slipped.

"You wanna be the one to get a foot in the face when she sees it unexpectedly and freaks out trying to move backwards?" I asked him, to which he did not respond. I waited until his shoes had disappeared into the vent completely before climbing up to join them, shivering a little at the bone-deep chill of the water soaking us. My hair was still dripping from the blast that had knocked me off my feet, and neither Ciel and Lizzie were in any drier condition –Lizzie because she been knocked off her feet as well, Ciel because he had gone underwater to get through the closing door in time to get to us…or rather, to Lizzie. I knew where _my_ ranking in his personal hierarchy was, and it definitely wasn't near the top.

Kicking up dust as we crawled, I made a face as we moved slowly through the vents. Though it wasn't near as cramped as I had envisioned, it was still bad –rather like trying to wriggle through a tunnel or use a slide on a child's playground when you yourself were an adult. Uncomfortable, but not stifling –which was good, because if I had a claustrophobia-based panic attack in here, then it was pretty much curtains for me. The heat and steam rising up from the various boilers beneath us was stifling enough already, almost chokingly so, and the steam brought with it more of the acidic, sulfur-esque charcoal-and-soot haze, so that combined with the dust made it a struggle not to sneeze or give in to a racking coughing fit with every other breath. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the trials of pre-21st century coal miners.

I had no clue of where we were going, save that we were following Keats –and the only reason I knew _that_ was because I could hear him…it…whatever, in the near-silent ducts. The quiet, almost silky _scrape_ of snake scales against metal was completely different than the soft rustles of Lizzie's dress or the little clicks and taps of her dainty heels, and the more occasional, coarser scrape of Ciel's suit and pants, and solid bumps of his blockier height-boosting heels. I, of course, made almost as much noise as the both of them combined, since I was forced by virtue of height and size to pretty much army-crawl rather than go on all fours like my smaller, luckier companions.

The air ducts were almost completely dark, and I was fairly sure that Lizzie was operating on sound alone to guide her after the snake as well, since, when we came to a junction and Keats slithered right, she scooted down the left-hand path. "Ciel?" came her quiet, frightened voice. "I think you should lead –I'm scared."

"All right." Ciel muttered, crawling on ahead –in the right direction– as Lizzie waited for him to pass her, then moved on, now in the middle instead of at the front. I, of course, stayed at the back, feeling like a hulking, clumsy behemoth compared to the two dainty pre-teens –though I'm sure my size had some kind of advantage in these tight quarters, for the life of me I couldn't think of it.

There were more grates in the "floor", after a while, though Keats did not stop by any. This led to some delay, as we humans had to carefully crawl over them while he just slithered on past the sides –though, given as I couldn't truly get up off my elbows, I just sort of slithered across them myself, relying on weight distribution to keep myself from plunging feet-or-face-first into a possibly hostile scenario.

Because there _were_ Bizarre Dolls in some of the rooms below us, we could hear the moaning, the clawing, and the banging, and my throat constricted as we also heard the pleas for help, mercy, and safety, as well as the occasional gargling splatter or scream as the Dolls pulled down a victim. But really, what could we do? Guns or not, we'd just be bringing three more warm bodies to the slaughter –it was up to the passengers to recognize the threats and flee, or fight, for themselves.

Of course, we couldn't help looking down through the vents as we passed, gradually ascending and going through some very tight squeezes indeed, especially when we had to boost or be boosted straight up –I certainly did not envy Ciel the task of carrying Keats up, too– and after almost ten minutes, Ciel came to a halt with an exclamation, peering through one of the grates.

"I know where we are, now!" he muttered triumphantly. "It's the Second-Class deck!"

I did some quick mental calculations as we started moving forward again at Keats's quick hiss of impatience. "We just climbed up six deck levels?" I muttered after a few seconds, feeling faint. No _wonder_ it had been so hard, or taken so long.

"Yes. I can get us to the Second-Class Dining Room, and from there it's a quick dash up the stairs to the upper deck, where the lifeboats are waiting. Snake and the others will be there, if anywhere." Ciel said firmly, then looked at Keats as we came to another junction. "We do not need you anymore." he said, loudly and clearly, as though speaking to someone hard of hearing. "You may return to your master."

Keats flicked his tongue several times, and then slithered off to the right, using whatever unique senses he had to home in on Snake's location.

"This way." Ciel said as the last _scrape_ of our guide's scales rustled off into the darkness, turning left and crawling quickly, with more anticipation. We followed him as he peered and muttered through every grate we came across, switching direction several times, before finally stopping before one in triumph. He seized it, shaking hard, but it seemed rather firmly affixed, and he growled under his breath as Lizzie –and to be quite frank, myself– squirmed in impatience behind him. "Damn! I can't get this open…"

"Are you alright, Ciel?" Lizzie asked in concern, before the grate finally gave and Ciel yelped, falling head-first through it. "Ah! Ciel!" she cried out in concern, and we heard a soft _thump._

"That…didn't hurt." the earl's slow voice came from underneath us, and Lizzie crawled forward to peer down as he exclaimed again. "Sebastian!"

"I apologize for my lack of punctuality on this occasion, young master." Sebastian's smooth voice replied. "You three are not hurt, I hope?"

 _Oh I just bet you hope._ I thought sourly, and Lizzie giggled, looking down through the grate.

"Ciel protected me, so I'm fine!"

"What of my aunt and family?" Ciel asked as Sebastian lifted Lizzie down by her hips and I, unable to bear being stuck in that cramped vent one second longer, slithered out behind her headfirst. Sebastian, damn him, was completely prepared for my hastiness and tapped my stomach in some karate-type way mid-fall, flipping me over so that I landed, though hard, on my feet.

"I believe everyone is alive and well." he reported briskly as I wheezed and tried to adjust to having been so deftly handled in midair. "I attempted to guide them to safety, but they insisted on rescuing the other passengers."

"That sounds like my mother." Lizzie said with a smile. "If they're all together, they should be all right. Thank you, Sebastian!"

"You are most welcome, my lady." the butler said with an elegant bow, and Ciel sneezed, drawing his notice.

"Achoo!"

"Here, young master, take this." Sebastian added as he began pulling off his tailcoat, but Ciel shook his head with a sniff.

"I don't need it. The tails will drag behind me." he said stuffily, and Sebastian cocked his head.

"But if your body is chilled through, your cough-"

"Don't bring that up now!" Ciel hissed in an undertone, and from my vantage point, I saw the demonic butler's eyes slide over to Lizzie in mute understanding.

"Very well, sir." He began chivvying the two young nobles towards the door as I patiently followed behind, for once not having to deliberately lag to make up for someone's smaller strides. "Come. They have begun to ready the lifeboats. Let us hurry to the deck and-"

There was a loud buzzing sound and the grinding of cut metal and wood from above us, and Sebastian quickly spun, darting backwards and pushing the two children further behind himself as a circle made out of the ceiling fell to the ground at his feet. I dodged to the side, looking up, and gulped as I saw a flash of red and heard the familiar buzzing of both a chainsaw and a lawnmower. Sebastian dodged the swipe of the chainsaw, pushing Ciel and Lizzie even further back, and I backpedaled with them, cursing.

_Fuck fuck shit motherfucker of course they'd show up now fuck fuck **shit**!_

"Nfu~!" the red-cloaked Reaper giggled as he slowly straightened up from amongst the wreckage of the ceiling. "Hunk sighted!"

"You are…" Sebastian grumbled.

"Grell Sutcliff!" Ciel spat, and the demented crimson Reaper chuckled and flourished his purloined coat like the skirt of a woman's dress.

"Hiiiiiiiii! It's been absolutely ages, Bassy!" he practically squealed. "Being reunited here, it must be fate!"

"It is simply coincidence." Sebastian replied bluntly, with even more frozen politeness in his tone than when he spoke to _me_.

"Aah! Cold as ice, you are~!" Grell cooed, practically swooning as behind him, Ronald Knox looked faintly exasperated. "But that side of you is, as always, divine!"

"Aw boy, he's found him, huh…?" Knox sighed wearily, then looked to the side at his compatriot. "Mister Sutcliff, sir. Don't forget we still have souls to reap, okaaay?" he drawled pleadingly.

"Ronald! You should've told me sooner if you knew Bassy was here!" Grell all but shrieked, turning to face his coworker. "Then I could've gone all out with my makeup!"

A sweatdrop formed over Knox's head. "Annnd that's exactly why I _didn't_ tell you…" he mumbled to himself as we, being the considerate people that we were, took the time to quietly scurry away and leave the Reapers to their little spat.

"Listen you…" Grell began hotly, but then noticed our absence. "Ah!" He bolted after us, cocking his chainsaw back for a swing as I put on an additional burst of speed. Sebastian could probably survive being hacked in half –let _him_ be the meatshield, for once. "Hey, wait for _me!"_ Grell screeched as he took his swing, Sebastian hoisting both Ciel and Lizzie in his arms as he jumped out of range and I frantically rolled out of the way, hearing the roaring buzz of the chain not inches above my left ear.

"To think you were the type to light a fire in a girl and then cast her aside like that! What a bad man!" Grell cooed as Sebastian was in mid-jump.

"Please do not immolate yourself on my account." the demonic butler replied coolly, his feet scuffing a little on the wooden floorboards as he landed. "As we are in something of a hurry, would you be so kind as to let us pass?"

"And if I refuse?" the red Reaper asked excitedly as he landed with a click of his heels, and Sebastian narrowed his eyes as red gleamed at the back of them.

"We shall force our way through, if we must." he said with a rough edge to his normally smooth butler-y voice, and I gulped as I rolled to my feet, trying to scan through my options.

"Ooh, yes! I can't say I dislike an aggressive man!" Grell said, practically quivering with delight, and struck his own odd, exaggerated pose complete with the rockstar-fingers on his free hand. "So let's have us a death match steamier than any paltry love or romance, hmm?!"

"Who is that man!?" Lizzie cried in horror –Grell was eccentric even by modern standards, which meant he must look positively insane in front of the Victorians– and I decided that my best bet was to cover her and Ciel as Sebastian fought the two Reapers.

"He is simply a deviant." the demonic butler replied quickly as he stepped forward, bracing his arms in a ready position for combat. Correspondingly, we three humans began moving back towards the hallway doors, though I kept half an eye on the combatants for safety's sake. "You might catch whatever he has if you get too close to him, so please stay back!"

"Well, I never!" Grell protested as he dashed towards the demon. "I'm just speaking honestly from my heart!"

He swiped at Sebastian as the demonic butler jumped up, lashing out with his foot with enough force to probably take off the Grim Reaper's head as Grell slid underneath the strike, and Sebastian, bargaining for enough room to maneuver, let his momentum carry him backwards, landing on his heels in a crouch –right on the wall of the listing side of the ship. Once again Grell took a swipe at him, once again Sebastian effortlessly leaped up out of the way of the impending strike, once again –but Grell's chainsaw hit the bulkhead, slicing a long, jagged line in the fabric of the ship _underneath the waterline._

"Oh no!" Sebastian gasped even as he was flying away, mid-jump behind Grell, and the wall cracked, seawater spraying from the long gouge as Grell spluttered and the three of us humans screeched and gasped from the cold impact, the wave engulfing us and sending us skidding headlong through the doors into our ultimate destination, the hallway –though we certainly never planned to do it so inelegantly. "Young master!"

I coughed and shook my head as the tide subsided, flinging the water out of my eyes and flicking the wet strands of my long hair that had straggled out of the hairpins out of my face. _I just got dry, too._ I thought plaintively, shivering a little at the renewed soaking and propping myself up on all fours, my hands and feet like blocks of ice, as I swiftly looked up and around to take in my surroundings and assess the situation. Knox had Sebastian pinned down with his Death Scythe once again, Grell was struggling and spluttering under the weight of the ocean, and Ciel was a little ways behind me, coughing on all fours in the two-inch deep layer of water. Lizzie was sprawled facedown a meter or so in front of us –right at the feet of a whole horde of the Bizarre Dolls.

"LIZZIE!" Ciel screamed as he pulled himself upright to see the threat, lunging out but then collapsing –from what I could see, he had twisted his ankle quite badly in his fall. "Lizzie, get up! LIZZIE!"

The young heiress groaned as she slowly pulled herself up, her tiny shoulders quavering with the effort, and at the gurgling rattle from above her, looked up –straight into the rotting faces of the crowd. She screamed, scuttling backwards on her rear, and Ciel yanked out his gun. "Damn!" he swore, and I wholeheartedly –but mutely– agreed, turning and pulling out my Colt as we shot the two closest to Lizzie. Ciel's gun went off again as I squeezed the trigger on mine without result, and numbly I forgot, _oh fuck, of course I forgot to pull the hammer back again fuck fuck shit **fuck** –_

I heard Knox exclaim in protest and disappointment as there was a _thud_ and I finally clicked the hammer back and took my second shot, knowing that Sebastian had shouldered the lawnmower aside, and there were several _clicks_ from behind me as Ciel gasped. "I'm out of bullets!"

Surrounded by gnawing minions of undeath, Lizzie tremulously raised her pale, tear-stained face to her fiancé. "I-! I…do so wish I could have stayed cute in front of you till the very end, Ciel." she hiccuped, and Ciel vainly struggled forward as I saw a whizz of black that could only be Sebastian shooting towards us.

"LIZZIIIE!"

_Stab._

Moving faster than any human had a right to, Lizzie shot up to snatch a sword from a nearby decorative wheel display hanging on the wall, and then spun to lunge forward in an expert fencing position, deeply piercing the brain of the Doll nearest to her.

"Wha-" Ciel gasped in raw shock as it fell before her, and Lizzie's emerald eyes narrowed fiercely as she stabbed another two through the head like a shish-kabob, leaping lightly with one foot on the wall to snatch another sword from the same display and twirling like a top as she decapitated several more Dolls. She moved like water flowing, like music, a dancing display of white silk and cold steel as blood sprayed the walls and corpses fell like leaves before her swords.

There was a grunt and a splash from behind me, and I turned to see two Dolls, tardy to the party, creeping up on Ciel. Lizzie saw them too, darting forward to sink both of her swords into their brains, lunging forward on one knee as her face hovered over Ciel's.

"Th…this ugly side of me…" she sniffled as blood ran down the shining rapiers in streams, and I saw tears fall like pearls from her face onto Ciel's. "I wanted to do everything in my power to keep you from having to see it. But…" She gripped her swords tighter. "This time…I will protect you!" She pulled her swords from the Dolls' heads as they crumpled to the ground, flicking the blades as blood splattered off of them. "I am the daughter of Alexis Leon Midford, Marquess of Midford and Head of the Order of the British Empire!" she announced as she spun to face the oncoming crowd, standing with her back to Ciel and holding the two swords in a ready posture.

"I am Elizabeth! Wife of the Queen's Watchdog!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 9.13 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 3rd, 2019, 8.34 AM USA Central Time


	43. That Butler, Decadence

_Arya's POV:_

After her bold and dramatic announcement, Lizzie spun into action once more, flaying the Bizarre Dolls left and right –and occasionally up and down, as she leaped and jumped and floated from one position to another like a lacy white Victorian butterfly of death, swords flashing in her hands as ribbons of blood stained the walls and even splotched across her face, on one cheek.

Soon the hallway was completely vacant of any Dolls –or at least any in any condition to move or attack– as Lizzie landed in a crouch, her last four decapitated victims buckling to the ground with a _splash_ behind her. She turned to glare at Grell, who raised a nonchalant eyebrow as she dashed towards him –after all, her swords wouldn't exactly do him very much damage no matter how skilled she was.

And besides, Sebastian caught her outstretched rapier between two fingers before she even cleared half the distance. "My lady." he said firmly. "You have done enough."

"Sebas…tian?" she breathed, panting heavily –I was somewhat mollified by the fact that all that exertion had indeed worn her out, because otherwise her skill was simply too inhuman to be believed. I grabbed Ciel's hand and pulled his arm over my shoulder, putting my other hand on his hip and helping him to his feet as Sebastian kneeled humbly before Lizzie, placing his hand over his chest.

"To have forced a lady to go to such lengths as these…I am a failure as a butler. Please forgive me." he implored, then stood, turning to face the two Reapers, who stood by the steadily gushing hole in the wall, as Knox used both hands to smooth his dripping wet hair back out of his face and Grell cocked his Death Scythe up on his shoulder. "I shall handle the rest…"

Grell shrugged and grinned, hoisting his chainsaw up again in a ready position. "Mmmm, I do feel a bit like the wind was taken out of my sails, but no matter! Let's pick up where we left off, hmm?" he cooed, and I felt Ciel tense under my hands as he let out a sudden gasp.

"Wait! Sebastian!" he barked as the demonic butler froze solid. "We can't afford to deal with them right now! Rian is the one who holds all the keys to this case! We're going after him!" he ordered as the penny dropped for me, and I winced –remembering all that happened after this– as Grell cocked his head.

"Huh?" he asked sharply, letting his Death Scythe fall back into his shoulder as Knox pulled out his notebook and began paging through it.

"Rian, Rian…" he mumbled as Grell continued right on over him.

"Hey, you." he demanded, looking down on Ciel –and me too, I supposed, though I could hope he didn't recognize me what with the difference in hair and clothing styles. "Are you saying we can get to the bottom of the reanimated corpses if we put the screws on this Rian chap?"

"Mister Sutcliff, look." Knox cut in, louder, holding his notebook in front of Grell's face. The two Reapers peered at it closely, shoulder-to-shoulder, for several moments. I realized, looking back on how Knox had consulted it when he was looking at Margaret Conner and her mother's records, that it must be a To-Die list or whatever –and, in retrospect from when I had seen this scene in black and white and still manga frames, that they must be seeing Stoker's name and the time of his death on the pages.

"I see." Grell said, more calmly than before. "It seems we can't afford to play with you either."

He and Knox leaped up into the hole in the ceiling they had made earlier, and Grell beamed down at us, baring his serrated teeth. "It does soooo pain me, but I fear we'll have to part here for now, dearest Bassy." He blew Sebastian a flirty kiss as Knox made a nauseated face from beside him. "Next time I'll be sure to wrap you all up in rosy red! Count! On! It! Toodles~!"

And with a flap of Grell's coat, they were gone.

Ciel pulled away from me and tried to take a step forward. "We should hurry too –ugh!" he yelped, almost falling before I caught him again.

"Young master!" Sebastian said in alarm as he and Lizzie splashed towards us. He knelt to examine Ciel's weak leg, pulling it out towards himself as Ciel's arm tightened on my shoulder and I busily tried to keep our mutual balance. "Your leg is quite swollen." he observed, and Lizzie gasped.

"Oh no!" She turned and knelt in front of us. "I'll carry you on my back!" she offered to Ciel, who gaped. I think he could bear the idea of me lifting him, since I was A) one of his lackeys, B) unconventional to begin with, and C) a lot older, but being offered the same service by his fiancée was probably too much for his noble's pride to bear.

"Wha-?!"

"Lady Elizabeth, I can take care of that…I truly cannot allow you to do such a thing." Sebastian said not-quite-sheepishly, and she gasped, clutching her porcelain-pale face as it turned pink in embarrassment.

"Ah! Oh, yes! Of course. You're right! Oh dear, what has come over me!? I…" She suddenly trailed off, lowering her hands as tears began to well up in her eyes, confusing all three of us as she put her hands to her eyes and began to bawl. "I'm the sort of scary girl Ciel despises!" she sobbed, making him gape.

"Huh?! What are you talking about?!" he asked in confusion.

"Well, you said before that you didn't want a strong, scary wiiiiife!" Lizzie all-but-wailed, and Ciel sweatdropped a little.

"Th-that was a long time ago. Besides, I'm the one who should be apologizing to you." he said simply, looking more apologetic than I had ever seen him.

"Then will you still marry me?" Lizzie asked desperately, scooting forward. "You haven't come to hate me?"

"How could I possibly hate y-" Ciel began hotly, but stopped at Sebastian's tiny gasp, slowly turning beet red. "N-now isn't the time for this!" he snapped as Sebastian spluttered, hand over his mouth. "We're heading upstairs, c'mon!"

"Kuh kuh kuh…even the young master cannot hold his own against a lady, I see." the demonic butler chuckled, and I felt Ciel's fist clench against the back of my neck.

"Shut your mouth, you!" he snarled, face still red as Lizzie blinked and smiled a little secret smile.

"Well then, let us be off." Sebastian said briskly as he took Ciel from me, who glared at him viciously as Sebastian held him up on one shoulder, the remnants of his blush still lingering on his face.

"You bastard. Are you quire done giggling ye-"

"Smile!"

"Snake." Ciel replied with one last hostile look at Sebastian, watching the white-haired servant splash towards us through the ankle-deep water.

"I truly am so glad everyone is safe –says Emily." Snake added as he reached us, and I let out a brief sigh of relief as I saw the way his tailcoat was much bigger than it had been before –clearly, Snake was hiding as many of his little friends as he could plausibly fit under his clothing, to refrain from alarming other passengers…or leaving them on the boat to sink.

"Where's Rian? Ciel asked as he noticed Snake was alone, and Snake looked down shamefully.

"Sorry, he ran away on us –says Oscar." he mumbled, and Ciel rolled his lower lip between his teeth, thinking.

"Is that so…well, let us regroup with the Marquess and his family for the moment." he said reluctantly, and Sebastian nodded obediently as Lizzie beamed.

"Yeah!"

_***Time Skip***_

I bit my lip and shivered as we came out onto the First-Class deck, the chilly night air nipping ferociously at my still-damp hair, clothes, and skin. Though all the running had warmed me up a little, I was still blue-lipped already –and the ship hadn't even sunk yet.

Other than that, though, it was a very nice night: the air was crisp and clear, the indigo-black sky blending seamlessly with the indigo-black sea, until we seemed to be swimming in a void where the icebergs floating in the distance seemed to be stars fallen to our level, and the stars sparkling in the sky were flecks of diamonds scattered like fairy dust all across the heavens. Aside from the slight breeze, which would have been easy to ignore if I was dry and more fully clothed, the night was still and tranquil, inviting quiet contemplation and leisurely strolling across the polished wooden deck.

Instead, the night was shattered by screams and laments as people of just about every class on the ship shoved and pushed and thrashed their way to the lifeboats, which the remaining crew were lowering as fast –and as full– as was nautically advised. Some of the people were bloodstained, others fainted from terror and being carried along by family and companions. There were no Bizarre Dolls on this deck, but with the way every single person was carrying on, it was as if every Doll on the ship was up here hounding them to their doom.

Through all the shouting and clamor of the people trying to get into the lifeboats, we heard a raised, aristocratic voice echoing sharply over the crowd. "Back off! Women and children first! Just look at the sight of you! How can you call yourselves British gentlemen!?"

Lizzie perked up as she heard it, darting through the crowd as we followed hurriedly behind. "Edward!"

I watched her run up to a teenage boy about my age in a top hat and tails who looked uncannily like my magic teacher Britain, except younger and with normal-sized eyebrows. "Lizzie!" he replied excitedly, and the two embraced, holding their mutual swords away from each other's bodies. "I'm so happy to see you well!" Edward said happily, but then he saw the blade his sister gripped as a shadow fell over his face. "…it must have been hard for you." he added, quieter.

"Forgive me." Ciel said as we came even with the embracing siblings. "It was entirely due to my helplessness.

"You said it!" Edward snapped, turning to face him as he and Lizzie released each other. "But fine, my lecture can wait. Now you two get on a boat, as quick as you can-"

"Edward, I have a favor to ask of you." Ciel interrupted as Sebastian set him down. He jabbed a thumb at Snake. "Put him on the boat in my stead."

Snake and Lizzie gasped, looking thunderstruck, and Ciel straightened his shoulders resolutely. "I can't get onto a boat yet. My butler and Miss Thompson should be able to aid me in finishing the business that led us here." he said firmly, and Edward nodded slowly after a long moment.

"All right, we'll take care of him." he said, and Lizzie rushed forward.

"If Ciel is to stay behind, I shall stay t-!" she began, but cut off with a little sigh as Sebastian administered some kind of karate chop to the back of her head.

"I beg your pardon, sir." he said as she fell limply into his waiting arms, Edward bristling in outrage.

"BUTLER!"

"It appeared that convincing Lady Elizabeth would take some time, so I resorted to a rough measure." Sebastian replied smoothly, and bowed slightly. "Please mete out whatever punishment you see fit at a later time."

"No…you have my thanks." Edward said grudgingly. "It's impossible for me to attack my sister from behind."

"This ship is listing considerably…its foundering is but a matter of time." the demonic butler continued briskly as I took the free moment to pin up my draggling hair –again. He handed Lizzie off to her brother as he immediately cradled her in the bridal position. "Please leave the ship with the utmost urgency and get as far away from it as you possibly can."

"Take care of Lizzie and Snake!" Ciel added as he climbed into Sebastian's arms once again, Snake watching us anxiously from behind Edward and Lizzie. "Let's go, Sebastian."

"Very good, sir."

"You don't need to come back, you know!" Edward yelled after us, and Ciel looked over his shoulder in mute question. "I'm perfectly fine with not having to give away my adorable little sister's hand!" Edward added in a huff, and a lazy smirk crawled its way across Ciel's face.

"Oh I shall return, I assure you." he drawled, and then we were around the corner and out of sight.

"May the peon inquire as to just where the heck we're going?" I said dryly as we hurried down into the interior of the ship once more, dodging the occasional screaming person headed for the deck.

"Stoker said the device was in his cabin in first class." Ciel replied briskly from where he was bouncing on Sebastian's shoulder. "Assuming on the off chance that he hasn't made off with it yet, we'll head there. Sebastian can pick up his trail if he has already absconded with the device."

"Huh." I said slowly, giving an appreciative nod. "Good, sound, watertight plan. Which begs the question, _why the hell am I here and not on the lifeboats?"_

"You are here because I said so." Ciel told me bluntly, and I scowled at him as a sour smile twisted his face. "Sebastian may be a demon, but I rather think two Grim Reapers, and whatever else we might encounter on the way, may be too much for him to divide his attentions effectively." he said with malicious sweetness. "You will assist him if needed."

A gloom cloud gathered behind me as we darted through another richly-carpeted hallway. "So I'm his backup, is that it?"

"Precisely." Sebastian himself responded, sound suspiciously amused about the whole arrangement. "And though I cannot afford you the courtesy of choosing your own opponents, I _can_ promise to allow you to choose which Reaper you face."

I thought about it for a few seconds. "Alright, dibs on Ronald Knox." I finally delegated. "He's the weaker fighter anyway, and Grell hates me already."

"Knox?" Ciel asked in slight confusion, and I pointed to my forehead briefly.

"Blondie with the cowlick and the lawnmower." I clarified, my breath coming short as we dashed through the halls.

"Ah."

"Though I do not expect to _need_ your assistance, please be prepared to aid me when the times comes." Sebastian added smoothly as we finally got to a corridor that had a sign proclaiming _First-Class Cabins_ , and I gave a brisk nod.

"Yeah, you betcha." I said, feeling excitement rise in me to match the –somewhat mortal– terror. _Finally_ I would be getting some _action_ , not just standing on the sidelines and being hypnotized by the living fictional byplay before me until it was too late to do anything but gawp. I was going be _useful_. I was gonna _help_.

I was gonna skid to a stop because that's what Ciel and Sebastian just did and _oh look-_

"The Viscount of Druitt?!" Ciel gasped, seeing the elegant man drift out from the hallway before us, a full wineglass in hand.

"Nn? And who are you?" Druitt asked blankly as he turned to face us, raising an eyebrow. "How do you know who I am?"

The three of us swallowed hard, but before we could scramble to explain ourselves the Viscount smiled in a self-satisfied sort of way and raked his fingers through his bangs, pushing his hair back elegantly. "Well, I suppose it is indeed difficult not to know of me, as I'm celebrated in society circles for being the personification of beauty." he simpered, and I rolled my eyes along with Ciel –luckily without Druitt noticing.

"With all due respect, what are you doing in a place like this, Viscount?" Sebastian asked, trying to wheedle out some information. "The walking dead are ambling through this vessel as we speak."

Druitt smirked. "There's something here that I daren't leave on this sinking ship, even if it means exposing myself to mortal danger." he said with a heft of his wineglass as four men walked around the corner, all supporting corners of a large, wonky-looking machine. It looked like a cross between an old-timey radio dish, a gigantic battery, and a piston box. We all exchanged swift looks.

"To begin with, those corpses amount to nothing more than useless dolls to me –oh dear." The Viscount paused as he looked at the time. "I've nattered on for too long…if you'll excuse me." he said lightly, turning to follow his men as they turned, carrying the device off down the hall ahead of us.

"The eternal flames in this breast!" Sebastian suddenly began, and the Viscount turned swiftly as I made a long-suffering face. I was going to pull a leg muscle if we kept doing this so frequently.

"Cannot be quenched by anyone! We are-"

"PHOENIX!" the four of us shouting, striking the pose –the Viscount doing a far more elegant, exaggerated version, of course.

"Ah, so you were comrades!" he said happily as he came back down again. "Speaking of, I do get the feeling we've met before…"

"That contraption!" Ciel blurted, clearly willing to do anything to avoid _that_ subject. "Can it perhaps stop the movements of those corpses?"

Druitt jolted. "Where did you learn that?" he asked with considerably less ebullience, but Ciel pressed his advantage.

"I knew it…then you're-?!"

The Viscount swirled to take a deliberate step after his henchmen. "If you wish to know, follow me." he said mysteriously, swirling the wine in his glass. "I shall allow you to bear witness as well." He turned to look over his shoulder with a sly smile. "To the advent of a new Aurora by way of medicine…that is."

"Shall we take it by force, sir?" Sebastian asked in a whisper as we fell in step with the little group, and Ciel shook his head.

"No, we don't know how to use it." he hissed back. "Let's have him activate it for u-"

He spotted the person on the back right of the machine. "What the-?! Undertaker!? What are you doing here?!"

"Hee hee! Hiya!" Undertaker said, briefly lifting several fingers from the machine by way of greeting/salute. "I was told to help carry this as I was in the middle of running for my life, you seeee! Then I caught sight of the Earl hollering _'Phoenix!'_ once more, and-"

"Wipe that from your memory right now!" Ciel barked hotly, flushing, and Sebastian obediently picked up the pace a little bit as he leaned in close to whisper to Undertaker. "But more importantly, do you have a clue as to how to work this thing?"

Undertaker grinned and tilted his head. "Can't say that I doooo? I wonder if something like this serves any useful purpose at all, you know?" he tittered.

 _Oh you sly dog._ I thought as the corner of my mouth twitched upwards, impressed by that sneaky little hint –I hadn't really registered that bit reading the manga from the outside, though now of course, knowing what happened next, I understood why Undertaker found that statement so amusing: the device really _was_ completely and utterly useless.

We made our way to the First Class Lounge, the same place this macabre nightmare of an evening had started out, and the Viscount ordered his men to set the device down on the landing that stood a little above the marble floor, below the twelve-odd steps we had gone down and above the two sets of six or so steps that led up to it, before the two taller staircases split and went to both sides of the upper level. "Be very cautious with it." he warned as they lowered the device to the ground. "It is worth more than your lives."

"Will you start it up know?" Ciel asked from Sebastian's shoulder, and Druitt shook his head absently.

"Not yet." he replied. "Our cast is still one player short."

"One player?" Sebastian repeated, and as if summoned we heard an outraged shout from one of the upper-level balcony hallways we had just vacated.

"You rat!" Rian Stoker snarled from where he was gripping onto the wrought-iron railings, Ronald Knox and Grell Sutcliff hovering (im)patiently behind him. "Why did you steal the device!?"

"Hello there, Rian." the Viscount said cheerfully, spreading his arms as though addressing a crowd. "I've been waiting for you! This day shall mark the fall of your empire in one night, as Pompeii once fell, and the day my new empire was born!"

"Eh!?" Stoker gasped.

Druitt gestured to the machine beside himself. "With the power of this device, I shall build a new empire!"

"Come again?" Sebastian and Ciel asked in unison, as I tried not to die of laughter in the background.

"He who possesses eternity shall rule with immortality and decadent beauty." Druitt continued heedlessly, caught up in his vision. "And it shall be called-" He struck his version of the god-awful Phoenix pose. "The Aurora Empire!"

Ronald Knox folded his arms behind his head. "What the heck? This all seems to have gone kinda pear-shaped, huh?" he commented uneasily, rocking his hips from side to side.

"Hmph." Grell snorted as he put a foot up onto the railing, pulling his chainsaw up for a strike as he stuck his tongue out over his upper lip. "I'll make that cad reddest of reds in the blink of an eye!"

"Easy now!" the Viscount said sharply, extending his wineglass over the satellite-dish-looking things that crowned the device. "Don't you care what happens to this machine?"

"Hey, Mister Sutcliff, time out!" Ronald yelped in fear, tackling Grell and grabbing him around the middle to hold him back before he could jump down to Druitt's level.

The Viscount chuckled. "Fu-fu…this is what is called true "power". I can stand victorious against you all with nothing more than a single wineglass!"

He burst into laughter as Sebastian's eyebrow twitched.

"This sense of irritation just grows and grows. May I kill him, young master?" he asked Ciel, who scowled heavily.

"No, not yet." he grumbled. "Though I do understand the urge…"

Suddenly, there was a loud _smash_ from every direction as dozens, if not hundreds of Bizarre Dolls crashed through the delicate windowpanes that formed part of the walls for the upper hallways of the lounge, and I whipped out my gun immediately as Knox let go of his coworker and lunged for his Death Scythe. "Hey! Just look at these numbers!"

"Viscount, start the device! Hurry!" Ciel yelled down the stairs, and Druitt snapped up one hand, as if shielding himself from the words.

 _"Non!_ I am no longer a Viscount!" he said dramatically, and I would have smacked my forehead had not aiming my gun reliably required both hands. He half-turned to send Ciel a sly and sultry gaze. _"Ceaser_ …I shall start the device if you call me that…with that lovely little mouth of yours, so very like a cock robin's."

 _"Let's kill him now, after all."_ Ciel all but snarled, but Sebastian didn't move.

"Please wait…though I do understand the urge." he replied with a hint of mockery, and then there was no more time for talking, as we were all –or at least, those of us not Grim Reapers– fighting for our lives. I at least did not forget to thumb the hammer back before each shot, which was good for me because at these close quarters and with so many Bizarre Dolls pressing in on every side, a single second of pause or hesitation would mean curtains for me.

One set of jaws clacked down on my right sleeve as I paused to reload, barely scuttling backwards in time to save my arm, and a clawing set of fingernails raked down my cheek, drawing blood. Cold, clammy hands pressed in on every side, grasping and groping at my clothing, impeding my movements, seizing and pulling at my hair, and for a while it was all I could do not to be carried off my feet or have a set of teeth sink into my flesh.

My knife flashed out, stabbing arms and hands and sinking into skulls, but I was still barely holding them off. Somewhere in the press, I fumbled and dropped my gun, and I didn't dare stop even to see where it was as I ducked and squirmed, writhed and kicked, punched and shoved, stabbing and slashing at the endless amounts of flesh puppets trying to rip me apart. Several other sets of nails raked down my back, my arms, my legs, my cut flesh stinging as blood trickled out over my rent clothing. My breathes rasped, aching, in my chest, and I was finally warm, goddamnit, warm with adrenaline pumping faster and faster through my veins, carried by my precious lifeblood that then spilled over my tattered dress. I knew from memory, without seeing, that even Sebastian was hard-pressed by this flood of enemies, and Knox and Grell were barely keeping themselves together.

I heard the Viscount's voice rise above the constant moaning and the hum of various weapons. "Ooh…ooh! Gladiators who put their flesh and blood on the line, whose lives scatter like so many fallen petals! This place is just like a corrupt coliseum. Gazing out as I sip my wine, I truly am…just like Emperor Nero!"

"Arrrghhhh! **Can we please kill him now?!"** I heard Knox roar in response as I cut a little more breathing space for myself, huffing and feeling sweat run down my back as I tried to fight my way back to Sebastian and Ciel, the former of which was little more than a black blur as he kicked and jumped and basically did everything in his currently-limited power to stop the Bizarre Dolls from clamping their teeth down on the earl he carried on his shoulders.

 _Well, you wanted action, and now you've got it._ I thought giddily to myself as another Doll grabbed me by the arm, jagged nails sinking deeply into my wrist, before I slammed my other hand blade-first into its skull, wrenching my knife away as the corpse fell to the ground. Another one was lunging for my face at the same time, and I ducked down, hearing teeth _clack_ above my head, pushing with one scratched, bleeding arm at the Doll's chest and shoving it away.

I pulled backward, spinning, because I _knew_ there were going to be more behind me, stabbing at their heads and kicking at their legs –because, as I had recently re-discovered, their bodies were just as brittle as Sebastian had stated, and consequently _very_ easy to slow down with a broken femur.

Being one target amongst a sea of enemies, I had to keep turning in a circle constantly –never facing in one direction too long, never standing still for longer than absolutely necessary to keep my balance. I kept thanking god over and over again as I struggled for cutting off the skirt of my dress, because I could have _never_ , not in a month of Mondays, survived doing this with it swishing about my ankles and providing yet another surface for the Bizarre Dolls to grab onto.

And then, unexpectedly, as I took another step back, my heel clunked against something bulky and roughly L-shaped, and as I turned again to kick and stab the Dolls away from me, I saw with the briefest of brief glances down that I had rediscovered my dropped gun. I knelt in an instant, scooping it up with my free hand, before bolting the last couple mostly-unguarded feet to Sebastian and Ciel. Once in that small bit of breathing space, I sheathed my red-splattered knife and began shooting, as Sebastian, hard-pressed on all but one side, started backing slowly down the stairs.

"-art that thing up, would you?!" The tail end of Grell's scream re-centered me, as it were, though I did not risk looking back as Druitt chuckled behind us.

"Heh! Very well. The time for the founding of my empire is upon us at last." he purred as my hammer clicked on an empty chamber and I hastily reloaded, finally _thinking_ instead of reacting on pure bloody instinct as I snapped off my shots and then conjured up a wall between the Bizarre Dolls and us, blocking out the flight of stairs that Sebastian and I had retreated down.

"Now then, all of you!" the Viscount trilled as I turned to look at him, placing a proud hand on his chest. "Show me the dance of the Phoenix in pledging your allegiance to your Emperor!"

_**Right, kill him.** _

"Dear, dear." the Undertaker giggled from the largely-empty staircase opposite of ours, sensing the murderously strong killing intent that suddenly filled the room. "Will you be satisfied with never learning what that gadget is for? Guh! Hee hee…"

Ciel choked as I reluctantly holstered my gun.

"What is it? Come now!" Druitt promptly us ecstatically, and we exchanged doleful looks.

"Th…the eternal flame in this breast…" Ciel, Sebastian, and I began reluctantly.

"…cannot be quenched by anyone…" Grell and Ronald Knox added –pun not intended– grimly.

"We are!" the Viscount of Druitt sang. "The new!"

" **PHOENIX**!" screamed every living thing in the room, doing that _scum-sucking **despicable** pose_ with the added flare of desperation.

"Well played, comrades!" Druitt said triumphantly. "Now I shall show you the army of death that bows before me!"

He stabbed at a button on the side with one black-gloved finger…and nothing happened.

"Eh?"

"Hn?"

"Huh?"

The Bizarre Dolls all roared at our sudden stillness and lurched forward.

"NOOOO!" Druitt squealed, and Ciel gaped over Sebastian's shoulder as I felt the magic wall I put up start to strain.

"What are you playing at?!" he accused the Viscount, as Undertaker collapsed –quite literally– in a fit of laughter.

"Gyaaaah! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha-Ha-Ha!"

"Why, Rian! The device you crafted is useless!" Druitt called in a scandalized voice up at the doctor, who had somehow miraculously managed to remain alive.

"I-it can't be!" Stoker gasped, while Undertaker looked to be almost literally rocking and choking with giggles on the ground.

"Weren't you the one who made this thing!?" Ciel demanded frantically, and Druitt blinked, almost looking insulted.

"There's obviously no way I could build a contraption like this." he scoffed bluntly, placing a hand on his chest again. "I simply borrowed it at my discretion."

"You bastard! Did you deceive me!?" Stoker roared down at us, and Grell took the opportunity to leap over the iron banister and streak towards the landing. He swiftly decapitated the scattered Dolls on the floor, making Knox whistle.

"Yeah, he really is something els–hey wait, Mister Sutcliff, sir!" he began, then gasped and started shouting as Grell showed no signs of slowing down as he got closer to the landing –if anything, he sped up, starting to jump. _"We Reapers should be goin' around killing humans, remember?!"_

**Clang.**

Almost like a scene from a play, there was a resounding gasp from everyone –except me, who knew it had been coming– as Undertaker lunged in front of the dramatically cowering Druitt, Grell's chainsaw grinding and sparking against the long kanji-inscribed lath of wood that Undertaker had used to block him. "Hee hee…its been ages since I laughed this hard…" he chuckled. "In my humble opinion, losing such an amusing chap would amount to a loss for this world. Wouldn't you agree with me, hmm? My little Grim Reapers?"

"The blade of my Death Scythe won't cut through it?!" Grell muttered to himself, and with a sudden shove Undertaker forced him off balance and set him tumbling into the air.

Undertaker pulled loose the strand of the mourning chain wrapped around his waist and flung out his arm, exposing the multiple other _sotoba_ lining the insides of his billowing black cloak as it flapped open. While the redhead was still in midair, Undertaker spun, sending almost a dozen of the sticks flying after the airborn Reaper as Grell blocked frantically, the errant and deflected sticks shattering the glass skylight above us as I instantly looked down and Sebastian pulled Ciel's face into his shoulder, the sparkling shards tinkling to the ground around us as Undertaker pushed back his long silvery bangs, revealing his face in its entirety.

"Aah. How sad it is…that laughter should vanish from this place." he purred, his dry, crackling voice evening out as he did, becoming lower, stronger.

"Undertaker?!" Ciel spluttered as several larger shards –along with Grell– fell to the ground with a _crash_ and, for a moment, there was silence in the decimated, blood-spattered lounge.

"He masked his presence most skillfully." Sebastian said as I took a step down, coming even with him and Ciel. "His eyes have always been hidden as well, so it escaped even my notice."

"Same here. He fooled me good." Grell grunted as he got to his feet, wiping a cut above his left eye with the back of his hand.

"Mister Sutcliff, sir!" Ronald Knox added in realization as he hopped down to our level. "Those eyes…"

Grell swiped another bit of blood away from his forehead with his thumb, his bright green eyes –the same shade as Ronald Knox's– locked on Undertaker's identical gaze. "Yes. That chartreuse phosphorescence, without a doubt…can only belong to a _Grim Reaper_."

Undertaker's small, ominous smile grew. "Hee hee! How nostalgic! It's been at least half a century since I was last called that." he chuckled, and a startled hush once again fell over the room as the groans of next wave of undead echoed through the nearby hallways, trying to force their way down to the hearts that beat quickly inside the still-living spectators.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 9.23 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 4th, 2019, 11.08 AM USA Central Time


	44. That Butler, Grim Battle

_Arya's POV:_

"The Undertaker…is a Grim Reaper?!" Ciel gasped as I heard footsteps behind us, and hurriedly took down my wall before Rian Stoker could smack himself straight into it.

"Explain yourself, Undertaker!" he cried as he rushed down the steps past us. "You said I could control those corpses with this device!"

"Did I now, truly?" the Undertaker mused playfully to himself, stroking at his chin with one long, square, black-painted nail.

"So you tricked me…was it all a lie!?" Stoker asked belligerently, throwing out his hands. "Even the part about sailing to America to popularize Absolute Salvation…everything!?"

Undertaker shrugged with a candid smile. "Well, you seeee…I found it comical that you were earnestly attempting to resurrect the dead via medical science." he said. "You were just the man of talent for my purposes."

"And what of our singular desire to bring the whole world into health and wellbeing through medicine!?" Stoker demanded, taking a belligerent step forward.

"That was _your_ dream, right?" Undertaker cooed pointedly, flapping his hand at Rian. "Besides! You are not capable of being the dead back to life by the power of the medical knowledge in your grasp." he continued, Stoker staggering backwards as the truth contained in Undertaker's careless words sent him reeling. "And it all ceased to be medicine in the first place the moment you began to depend on my techniques. One who conducts procedures upon his patients that he himself does not understand can no longer call himself a physician."

"H-how could this be…?" Stoker whimpered as he collapsed to all fours, like a puppet being cut of his strings, and Undertaker leaned forward.

"You were like an eager little puppy, naively buying all I said without question." he said, ruffling Stoker's hair in a mockery of affection. "Good boy."

"So you're saying that you masterminded the Aurora Society's experiments to resurrect the dead? Undertaker!" Ciel demanded as Sebastian put him down, and the silvery-haired Reaper smiled slyly as he turned away from Rian.

"That's a secret~" he trilled, holding a finger to his lips, before suddenly lowered it. "–is what I'd like to say, but you have paid for information innumerable times over with that Phoenix pose of yours, Earl. So tell you, I shall! Hee, hee!" He settled his weight into another foot, swirling his hand upwards to become level with his shoulder as he began to declaim. " 'Twas indeed I who produced these reanimated corpses."

"To what end!?" Ciel barked.

Undertaker looked up at the shattered skylight, tapping and grinding the end of one of his _sotoba_ sticks against the ground. "Well, let's seeee. At first, it was probably simple curiosity towards humans. Humans possess "bodies of flesh" and "souls" –if the two are present, humans, as living beings, exist in this world and continue to log their "Cinematic Records", the memories of their lives. And when the bodies of flesh decay and Grim Reapers retrieve their souls, their Cinematic Records come to an end at that moment, and the living become the dead. Grim Reapers, going by their lists, extract human souls from bodies and bring Cinematic Records to their ends. Day after day. Indifferently. Matter-of-factly. However, one day, after I'd spent a long time as a Grim Reaper doing just that, day in and day out, something occurred to me."

He looked down at us again as he clacked the stick against the ground harder. "What would happen if there was a _sequel_ after those endings?"

Grell and Ronald Knox inhaled sharply, looking appalled at the very notion, as Sebastian narrowed his eyes.

"What would happen to the bodies of flesh that had lost their souls and whose memories had come to an end if I _added_ a continuation to those very memories?" Undertaker continued conversationally. "Souls alone are all Grim Reapers hunt, after all. The "bodies" and the "memories" in their brains still remain _in this world."_

"Come on…" Grell scoffed. "You're telling me you edited their Cinematic Records?"

Undertaker chuckled and pointed to the upper hallways, where a small scattering of Bizarre Dolls staggered in our direction. "Hee, hee! Well, now! Why not use your powers and have a look-see at their records for yourself?"

Grell shrugged to himself and jumped up to the balcony hallway, slicing ferociously through two of the dolls as they collapsed to the ground. He suddenly jerked back, letting out a cry of surprise. "Hey! What is this!?"

"This is…" Sebastian said in bewilderment, and Ciel spluttered impatiently, unable to see what was going on –though this time, I actually did know what it was: the two Cinematic Records coming to an end, and then Undertaker doing various ridiculous poses with a cane, fake black toothbrush mustache, and top hat.

"What's going on!?" the earl asked in confusion, and I looked at him and shrugged –after all, I only knew what it looked like from memory, so technically I was as blind to all this as he was.

 _"The End_ title of a Cinematic Record, which arrives arm in arm with death, never appears because I attached counterfeit memories to the records, like so." Undertaker said obligingly, explaining it to those who could not see the Record. "And to my surprise, the flesh, under the mistaken notion that _"my life continues on"_ …began moving again without its soul!"

He smiled and twirled in place, before forming a heart with both hands before his chest. "All living beings instinctively attempt to make up for what they lack. If their bodies are wounded, they try to close their wounds. If their spirits feel isolated, they seek others to alleviate their loneliness. So _they_ also instinctively desire what they lack…and in seeking their "souls", they attempt to rip open the bodies of living humans, in order to even out the balance of their never-ending Cinematic Record. You see?"

Ciel gasped. "So that's why they came after our souls when they couldn't see or hear us!?"

The Undertaker sobered a little, his smile fading. "Even though it's impossible to make another's soul one's own…" he said softly. "I can tamper with Cinematic Records, but I cannot create souls. I experimented plenty, but most of them became no more than dolls of flesh without an ego. And so I call them thus –neither living, nor dead…they are Bizarre Dolls, warped flesh puppets."

Ciel made a face of disgust. "Even bad taste has its limits." he grimaced, and Undertaker chuckled as he strode up the opposite staircase.

"If you cannot understand their beauty, you have quite a ways to go, my lord!" he cooed, grabbing a female Doll as she fell over a railing and pulling it into his arms, waltzing with her as though she was still living as a rattling groan burst from her mouth with each tug. "White, waxen skin that has been sewn together prettily in semblance of their living selves. Mouths that no longer clamor loudly or spit out lies. Are they not more beautiful now then when they drew breath?"

Ciel dry-heaved and held a hand up to his mouth. "I'm going to be sick!"

"That may be how you feel…" Undertaker conceded as he looked down at the Doll. "But there are humans who desire these Bizarre Dolls, you know?" he added, to Sebastian and Ciel's obvious surprise. "These children don't feel any pain or fear. They single-mindedly desire souls and devour the living…" A macabre grin slit itself across his face. "What say you? Do they not make the best military animals?"

"Wha-!?" Ciel choked as Grell and Ronald Knox gasped.

"Those eccentric fellows said they wanted to see just how useful _these_ could be…so I decided to experiment by tossing the same number of Bizarre Dolls as live humans onto this luxury vessel. Who and how many will be left standing when the killing ends?" Undertaker continued amicably, pushing the Doll aside as it tumbled clumsily over the staircase railing to splatter on the ground floor below, and Sebastian huffed.

"…you really have lost your mind." he said, and the Undertaker chuckled.

"I never imagined we'd run into an iceberg, though." he admitted, strolling lightly down the steps back to the landing. "Having quit being a Grim Reaper, I don't have my list anymore and all…well! I've been saved the trouble of making this ship sink, so it's a matter of killing two birds with one stone!"

"I see." Sebastian said flatly. "So…this passenger liner was never meant to sail to America from the beginning."

Undertaker stroked his chin with one finger. "Because of you all, more humans survived than I'd expected. Will I get a scolding for that?" he wondered playfully to himself.

Grell growled and put his hands on his hips. "Hmph. The more I hear, the more we can't overlook this." he huffed, and Knox nodded beside him.

"No doubt." he agreed. "It'd be mind-blowing to allow a Grim Reaper to warp 'death'."

Knox's green eyes then narrowed behind their thick-lensed glasses as his eyebrows furrowed simultaneously. "All the same, he ain't wearing specs." he added in an undertone. "Is he one of those "deserters" we get once every blue moon?"

"I don't care what he is." Grell snorted. "Anyway, a Grim Reaper interfering with life and death in the human world is against the rules."

A sly smile twitched at the corner of Knox's mouth. "To hear you of all people say that, sir…" he mumbled as Grell continued, heedless.

"Tying him up and turning him over to the higher-ups would also seem to be the most efficient way to get him to reveal to workings of the moving corpses, hmm? And…"

Flames seemed to dart from the demented red Reaper's eyes. "On top of your breach of conduct, I shan't forgive your sin of harming a girl's face!" he roared. "I SHAN'T FORGIVE YOU, EVEN IF YOU ARE A TOTAL DISH!"

I rolled my eyes.

But even as I was doing so, Grell zoomed towards the Undertaker, who effortlessly deflected the blow off to his side. "Oopsie." he chuckled as the crimson-swathed Reaper staggered sideways, and Ronald Knox skidded in behind Undertaker.

"I got your ba–DAH!" he said excitedly, then grunted, barely getting his arm up in time to protect his face as Sebastian delivered an explosive roundhouse kick at his head, using the momentum to spin off and aim another kick at Undertaker, who ducked and slid under the blow. "HEY!" Knox spluttered as he was sent skidding off across the floor of the lounge.

"Bassy, what do you think you're doing!?" Grell gasped as he regained his balance, and Sebastian tugged one of his white gloves down on his wrist.

"We cannot allow you to haul him away." he said coldly as Grell gaped at him.

"We ourselves are tasked with presenting the truth before Her Majesty, the Queen." Ciel said firmly as he descended down the staircase, keeping one hand on the rails to support his weakened foot. "We mustn't let him escape!"

"And so, we shall take him into our custody." Sebastian finished, tugging his other glove down as an icy smirk surfaced on his face.

"This is a Grim Reaper concern! Keep your noses out of it!" Grell snapped, and Sebastian leveled the full force of his disdainful glare at him.

"This is my duty as a butler. Keep _your_ noses out of it." he replied coldly, and Grell huffed out a snicker.

"Ha! Stoic as usual, Bassy! You do know how to get my blood rushing!" he said, then took his Death Scythe in both hands and held it out before him like a sword. "Fine, then! If you're raring to go, we won't hold back either!"

"That the phrase "hold back" even appears in your dictionary comes as the greatest of all the day's shocks." Sebastian replied with stone-cold deadpanned sarcasm, and Ronald Knox, from where he had been sent skidding into the wall, slowly climbed to his feet, swaying.

"Then it's simple. The first one to get him wins." he said, flicking his hand at us before looking up, an irk mark throbbing on his forehead. "And I don't have any intention of losing to an old man like you!"

"Hee, hee…this is just like a fox hunt." Undertaker cackled as the three combatants encircled him, a dark gleam entering his green eyes. "But I wonder, who is the fox, and who are the hounds?"

All three of the supernatural beings exploded into motion as they ran for him, Sebastian whipping out his customary tableware as was his wont –however, Ronald Knox's lawnmower suddenly whizzed at his head, forcing him to duck. "Whoa there!" the Reaper chuckled impishly. "My mistake!"

"Your eyesight seems rather poor… _hm!?"_ Sebastian snapped, hurling the knives over his head and forcing Knox to duck as they flew towards the Undertaker –who spun his long stick in a circle, deflecting them.

"Grim Reapers are all verrrrry near-sighted!" he confirmed as Grell lunged in behind him.

"That puts you at a disadvantage!" he shouted, swinging his chainsaw down as Undertaker blocked it with his _sotoba_ –but this time, it cut through. "Eh?!" Grell squeaked as his momentum carried him forward and Undertaker moved through the arc of his body, leering as he turned to lash a solid kick across Grell's abdomen, sending him skidding even farther away.

He then leaped over Knox, who had zoomed in with his lawnmower, and landed lightly on the other Reaper's back as he slammed his stick down between Ronald's glasses and his face –sending them flying off into the unknown as the younger Grim Reaper cried out and lunged for them, but missed by a mile. "Damn, my specs!" he swore, grunting as Undertaker brutally kicked his head to push himself upwards.

"You're still green if you're relying on your eyeeees~!" he sang as Knox thudded to the ground, and Grell leaped to grab the errant glasses.

"What the heck are you… _doing?!"_ he demanded, catching and throwing them back at his coworker as Knox struggled to his feet and reached for the impending spectacles.

"Thank you sir–" he began preemptively, but there was a sharp whizz, and the glasses were snatched practically from Ronald Knox's very hand by one of the Phantomhive family's silver knives. "Er!"

I jumped as Sebastian's sharp voice cracked at _me_ like a whip, interrupting the fluidity of the scene as I remembered it. "Thompson! Take care of that one!"

 _Oh, right._ I thought belatedly, running towards the effectively blinded Knox as he peered blearily in my direction. _I gotta fight…er, distract him. I ain't in no kind of condition to be fighting a Grim Reaper._

"Aw, man, a human? Really?" he asked, though how he could tell from here was beyond me. It was probably the same way Reapers could sense demons without even seeing them; some kind of psychic ability. And even without his glasses, he would hear the footsteps and see the fuzzy dot approaching him, so he'd know it was me. "Listen, lady, just go back to the stairs before you get hurt and-"

**Whack.**

Since he was more kneeling than standing, I didn't bother punching him –it would have cost me too much in momentum and therefore in force. I did, however, deliver a wincingly hard ground-to-sky punt to his chin, snapping his whole head back and, to my somewhat irrelevant pleasure, sending him tumbling backwards a few more feet.

_Well at least my legs are still **mostly** in shape._

I followed up my (brief) advantage by muttering and sending a storm of tiny ice shards flying at him, cutting into his face, clothes, and hands – which made me curse under my breath, because they were supposed to have been _bigger_ , damnit, and far more damaging.

_Still haven't mastered that spell, I guess._

"Oi! There's a magician in the house?" Knox grunted rhetorically as he struggled to his feet, leveling a fuzzy glare in my general direction as he groped vacantly along the wall behind himself –I realized belatedly that I had knocked him in the same direction that Sebastian had sent his glasses. _Oops_. "That's not _fair!"_

"All's fair in love and war?" I tried hesitantly, pulling out my Colt again and reloading as quietly as I could. If I shot him enough times, maybe I could slow him down –because I _really_ didn't want to kill or permanently damage a canon character, being as we were on a sinking ship and if I paralyzed him he was pretty much a goner.

"Yeah, but a _magician_ , now that changes things-" His hand fumbled onto his glasses at the same time I finished reloading my gun with a _click_ , and I brought the barrel up at the same moment he pulled them off of Sebastian's knife.

**Blam!**

"Whoa!"

Knox's spectacles touched his nose just as I squeezed the trigger, and faster than I would have though possible, he spun to the side as my bullet left a pockmark on the expensive wood paneling. I shot after him as he scampered towards his abandoned lawnmower, ducking and dodging like a monkey made of quicksilver. "Heha! You're pretty good with that thing!" he called as my chamber ran empty – _ **again** , fuck_ I was getting a better gun when this was all over!– and I stuffed it back inside its holster, not even bothering to reload, as his hand stretched out towards his Death Scythe–

"Yow!"

Knox ran face-first into the yellow glowing wall I had panickedly threw up, because I had to, at all costs, prevent him from getting to that lawnmower. The odds were pretty much even right now, and maybe even leaning slightly in my favor –he was faster, stronger, and far more resilient (possibly even regenerative), but I had _weapons_. Furthermore, I had magic. And granted, Knox could cut through my magic walls like a hot knife through butter with his Death Scythe, but he didn't _have_ his Death Scythe right now. So that was another point for me on the survival scale.

"Aw, come off it, miss!" he yelled at me angrily, eyes narrowed, and I drew my knife instantly as he started moving in my direction, streaking towards me with preternatural speed. "Lemme just get my _scythe!"_

I barely blocked in time as he cut at my ribs with a small silver knife –I briefly recognized it as the one he would have used on Sebastian earlier, when Ciel had left them to fight it out in the room the Aurora Society had met in while we pursued Rian Stoker– not having expected for him to move from low-to-high. Our blades clanked against each other as I frantically blocked and weaved backwards –Knox multitasked _and_ fought dirty, stomping down at my legs and feet with every other movement as his knife cut at my face and danced low, under my guard, to slash at my ribs and torso. He was good, I had to admit. He was _very_ good.

But I was slightly better –or, more probably, I just had beginners's luck.

Knox yelped as I frantically cut back at him, managing to slice the reverse edge of my blade deeply into the wrist of the hand that held the knife, and he involuntarily dropped it: my foot immediately stomped down on the blade, preventing him from taking it back, and then _I_ took the offensive, making Knox skip backwards. I then had the bright idea to cast another wall to give myself breathing space, which made him scowl, and then bent down, taking my foot off the knife and, for lack of anywhere else to put it, shoving it into my boot for safekeeping.

And then my walls, both of them, started to flicker.

 _Oh **fuck**._ I thought as both my and Ronald Knox's eyes widened, for two very different reasons. I hadn't realized it before, but now that it was starting to happen, it seemed almost _too_ elementary for me to have missed.

Magicians –like myself– pulled ambient power from the surrounding environment to fuel their spells: this loose energy was almost everywhere that humans had inhabited for a long time, or where some especially great magic had been done. An old, largely populated area, like London, had so many centuries of activity and usage that I could conjure away literally for decades, as long as I didn't do anything on the monumental, international scale, and the surrounding area would _still_ have magic left over.

However, out on the open ocean like this, where scarcely anyone ever went, there was very little loose energy to pull on –I could draw energy from various water creatures, if they agreed, or from the vast ocean itself, but that would take time and a rather cumbersome ritual. This meant that I was, in essence, coming to the end of the free magical supply in this area, having already used it all up.

Which meant that my spells were going to start failing.

There was a sudden loud _crash_ from behind Knox, and I looked up and gaped as he half-turned, seeing half of the upper balcony hallways come crashing down on my other wall –and his Death Scythe. It took me half a second to realize that that must mean that Undertaker had revealed his own Death Scythe and cut a wide swath of destruction around Sebastian –but with that moment of distraction, my wall flickered out, and I looked back down just in time to see Knox's black-gloved fist.

**Crack!**

Pain exploded in my face, and my teeth involuntarily clacked together as the taste of blood flooded my mouth and I was sent flying backwards. I crashed into –something wooden– with a loud _crunch_ , splinters embedding themselves in the flesh of my back, and the ominous electric _vrrrrm_ of Knox's Death Scythe revving up ground against my ears as my body hit the ground back-first with a jarring _thud_. He had hit me all the way across the hall and into one of the lower service hallways, smashing my body through the cheaper wooden railing.

I squinted through the pain of a probably-broken nose and all the new splinters freshly jabbed into me from the force of impacting the floor of the service hallway, watching Knox bare his teeth in a grin that was more feral than friendly as he came up to the edge, standing on it with his lawnmower firmly set before him.

"Usually I'm against hittin' a lady, but if you're working with a demon, well then, I just can't have it." he said cheerily, squeezing the black-gloved hand that was smeared with blood – _my_ blood– on the handle of his Death Scythe as he tilted it up, the blades whirring faster. "No hard feelings, eh?" he added as he hoped down to my level, the various chunks of wood splintering and scattering under his feet and the blades of his Scythe. "Not that I can kill you or nothin', but still. Don't say much for your chances on this boat if I just rough you up and leave you here."

I glared up at him, wiping some of the blood off my face with the back of my hand. "Y'know, I _really_ liked you better when you were stuck between the pages of a book." I muttered, half to myself, half to him, and struggled to sit up. "In real life, you're an asshole."

"Here now, a lady shouldn't _swear!"_ Ronald Knox said, his voice sharply rising as he raised his foot and stomped it down with the clear intent to break one or both of my legs –only I wasn't there anymore. I had rolled frantically out of the way, swiftly mouthing a curse, and then flicked my fingers. Knowing from experience that one blow from his Death Scythe would smash down any barrier I erected, I didn't bother to shield myself. Instead I had created a small, tray-seized version of my usual magic wall, and, like a frying pan in a comedy, sent it shooting at his face.

And, luckily for me, it had _exactly_ the _same_ effect as a skillet in a farce. I almost expected a metallic bong to echo in the air as Knox's head jerked back and his knees folded underneath him, though I spent most of those ten seconds fighting to my feet and trying to climb back up to the lounge level before he recovered and promptly sent me flying through a window at thirty miles an hour –which I had no doubt he was willing and capable of doing. Though, as he'd said, he couldn't _technically_ kill me directly, Grell had killed humans before and got off with only suspension and a slap on the wrist. Pluswhich, there were probably a thousand and one ways for Knox to wriggle around that particular rule if he _really_ wanted to do it –especially since I was a human directly aiding a "filthy noxious beast", as Sebastian was so _lovingly_ named by Reaper management.

So I was not interested in giving Ronald Knox either motive or an opportunity.

"SEBASTIAN!"

I looked up with a gasp as I finally got back onto level ground, seeing Ciel tumbling over the banister and Sebastian –Undertaker's Scythe embedded in his abdomen– reaching out for him desperately.

 _Man, you miss a lot of dialogue and shit when you're fighting someone else._ I thought absently as time seemed to stretch on and on like a rubber band snapping, knowing that Undertaker was viewing Sebastian's Cinematic Record even as I dashed towards the falling earl, hoping to catch him if Sebastian, for whatever reason, missed –but then a wrecking ball of patent leather slammed into my stomach, sending me flying across the lounge – _again_ – as I forced all of the muscles in my bruised, battered, bleeding body to go limp, so that when I hit the far wall, I –hopefully!– didn't break anything. Which, as my skull crashed into the expensive wood-and-plaster paneling so hard that I saw stars and my stomach heaved, almost sliding to the ground as my numb, shaking legs refused to support me, was a very good thing.

"You just don't know when to give up, do you?!" Knox snarled as he streaked after me, Death Scythe whirring, and I had just enough time to glimpse Undertaker raising his own Scythe over Sebastian's head before I ducked, the lawnmower _grinding_ and _cracking_ against the wood paneling where my head had been.

_Wait a minute. Undertaker stabs Sebastian. Backstory for forming of the contract. Undertaker threatens to kill Sebastian with his Death Scythe. Because of the amount of water it took on, the ship starts-_

I felt the ship begin to vibrate slightly under my feet, and I panicked, ducking under Knox's arm and running frantically towards one of the support posts between the hallways as I heard him give a questioning grunt behind me.

_-to pitch upwards!_

I flung myself at the post, wrapping my arms around it tightly, and heard a chorus of screams in the distance as the floor beneath our feet suddenly started to slope upwards –sharply.

"Blimey!" Knox swore from behind me, and there was a rattling, clattering storm of noise as all of the tables, plates, corpses, shards of glass, and anything else that wasn't nailed down to the floor followed the demanding pull of gravity, cascading down to and past our level as I hung on tighter, feeling my legs –once braced against the floor– swing out horizontally, or rather what was now vertically, into open air.

There was a high-pitched scream as Knox leapt to the banisters on the other side of the lounge, and before I could react, Rian Stoker dropped down past us to land with a gruesome crunching _splat_ amidst the debris.

"Rian Stoker. Born August 24th, 1854. Died April 20th, 1889, due to a fall. Additional remarks, none." Knox commented clinically, looking down at the mangled corpse, then looked up to where Sebastian, Ciel, Grell, and Undertaker were clinging or standing on various new precipices to prevent themselves from falling –pun not intended– to the same fate. "Looks like I'm needed up there."

He swung himself and his lawnmower up, to the other side of his post, and began ascending to their level as I belatedly dropped down, being only twelve or so feet above the new floor.

"Damnit!" I swore, watching Knox hop lightly from banister to the steeply inclining floor to support post with an agility and defiance of gravity that no real human could ever manage. In other words, he was moving out of my range: Knox had more dodging ability than ten cats, as far as my bullets were concerned, so I was already unable to get a clear shot at him from down here. Clearly, he thought a further punch-up with me was more needless hassle than he wanted, and felt that his energies could be better employed by aiding Grell in taking down Undertaker –in other words, exactly what I was supposed to be trying to _prevent_. "Get _back_ here, you asshole!"

No response, obviously.

I frantically wracked my brain for some kind of spell to help me out here, but came up blank. _Fuck_ Grim Reapers and their Death Scythes that could cut through all my walls and shields, the only things I could really conjure reliably.

_Wait –when aimed at **him** …_

Feeling the power trickle into me more and more reluctantly, I summoned up a series of the walls, like a spiral staircase, and began running up them in pursuit. Things were moving too fast for mere observation now –and hell, if I stayed down here, I was gonna sink along with the ship, and that was _so_ not on my agenda for tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 9.36 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 5th, 2019, 11.06 AM USA Central Time


	45. That Butler, Battle on the Ice

_Arya's POV:_

I got up to the "main" level, panting a little, only a few seconds after Knox did, and leapt up to the support post just beneath Ciel and Sebastian's as I saw the demon's eyes move towards me incrementally as Ciel, secure in his grasp, smirked at the Reaper.

"I won't have you making light of my butler." he was sneering as blood seeped out over Sebastian's chest. "Do you really think that this is enough to wear him out? That he's going to lose to you? Your jokes aren't amusing in the least. Aren't I right, Sebastian?" he asked without looking up at his butler, and Sebastian turned his gaze to Knox with a smile that was more of a grimace.

"Yes, most definitely." he replied, then hacked and coughed a little as a few flecks of blood spewed over his lips. Knox shifted a little as he saw that, his expression turning sour.

"Aww, brother. Now I can't help feeling like I've turned into a bully picking on the weak…" he sighed, and Sebastian suddenly dropped Ciel, shooting forward to slug the Grim Reaper right off of his support post. I realized why he had looked at me –he was making sure I would know what to do– as I caught Ciel bridal-style with a grunt, staggering and wobbling a little as my heart shot up into my mouth, feeling the thinness of our support and the way the edge of my shoe almost slipped off of it.

 _Damn…_ I thought shakily, remembering the long drop –and the sudden stop– that Stoker had taken, and how we had almost copied it.

Ciel, luckily, had known to remain still, and now that I caught my balance wriggled around a little bit, shifting himself up in my arms so that he could see. What he saw, and what I saw, was Sebastian kicking the living shit out of Ronald Knox, and even though my still-bleeding nose stung harshly, I couldn't help but suppress a wince of sympathy for the young Reaper.

Ciel tugged my sleeve, indicating where Grell was fighting the Undertaker down to the lower level, where he would have a better footing. "Let's get down there. Sebastian will finish with the other one shortly."

"What comes up, must go down." I muttered sardonically myself, then bit my lip as I tried to figure out a way to get down there swiftly that wasn't a headlong plunge and wouldn't end up with us breaking every bone in our mutual bodies. One of my walls, maybe?

"Uh, this might be a little weird, so hold on." I told him, and Ciel obediently tightened his grip as I inhaled deeply and flicked my fingers, forming a long –tilted– magic wall. I jumped onto it, thanking god that I was wearing pants and a long-sleeved dress as we began a long, sliding descent; otherwise I would have gotten a friction burn to end all friction burns.

Ciel's fingers tightened frantically on my arms and shoulder, and I bit back a whimper as they accidentally dug into several open wounds, but I had to concentrate –we weren't going fast enough for a fatality, but broken bones weren't off the menu…not yet, anyway.

Using pure willpower, I shaped the wall further into a curve, slowing us down but sending us straight towards the wall. At the very last second, I "reflected" it downwards, so that instead of hitting the _physical_ wall we crashed into the magical beginnings of another curved slide, which went in the _other_ direction, and tumbled downwards some more. This I repeated until we rolled to an ungraceful –but intact– stop on one of the lower hallway posts, and I caught the railing to prevent us falling down the hallway itself, before both Ciel and I struggled to our mutual feet. Despite the complicatedness of the maneuver, and the mental strain it took on me, it was less than ten seconds flat before we stood up to watch Sebastian fling a quite-literally beaten-senseless-Knox into Grell, sending both of them careening off into the distance.

The butler landed beside Ciel, putting a foot up onto the lawnmower he had taken from his opponent as we faced the Undertaker in a jagged line. "I say! How soft the youth of today are!" Sebastian commented airily, leaning down to rest his elbow on the handle and his chin on his hand. "Is it not a little behind the times of you to depend solely on your Death Scythes?" His eyes then narrowed as he straightened up again, his pose becoming belligerent. "Now! The only one who remains is…"

Undertaker twitched as there was a series of echoing creaks around us, and Sebastian trailed off as I turned pale. The creaks escalated into an ominous, floor-rattling shake, and Ciel clung to the demonic butler's arm as we began to list backwards even further. "Th-this is bad!"

 _The ship's finally sinking!_ I realized in horror, and at the same moment, part of the ceiling –now the wall– to the right of us gave, sending out a spray of icy water over all three of us and, for the _third_ time this night, soaking me in freezing cold seawater. Sebastian shielded Ciel, mostly, with his grip as the young earl locked his arms around his butler's neck to avoid being dragged backwards, and Undertaker hopped up a level to avoid the spray.

"Well, the time has come to say our farewells at last." he said as he landed. "I must say, it's been cracking good fun!"

Grell and Sebastian, whom Ciel still clung to, leapt up in unison, striking at the Undertaker with foot and chainsaw as he jumped up and away and spun his Death Scythe, blocking Grell and deflecting Sebastian's foot over his shoulder. He erred, however, and Sebastian's heel caught and broke the upper coil of the chain of mourning lockets, which Ciel, snatching at, managed to snag in one hand as Undertaker soared upwards, a smirk gradually creeping across his shocked face.

"–Lord Earl. I entrust that to your keeping for the present. Please take it with you and treat it with care." he said simply, then landed on another of the higher beams and tilted his head, his smile softening. "For it is my treasure."

Ciel struggled, reaching over Sebastian's shoulder, as the Undertaker turned away from his, raking his hand through his long silvery hair to push it away from his face. "Wait, Undertaker!"

"So long, milord. Let's meet again." the renegade Reaper said as he swung his Scythe back, and then with an almighty _crash_ and a harsh green light, cut the entire ship in two. As thousands of tons of steel, plaster, and wood crashed down upon our heads, I faintly saw Sebastian leap up and followed his path frantically, creating another "staircase" of magic walls and pounding up it frantically, ducting and dodging chunks of debris. A rain of blunt objects knocked against my forehead, shoulders, and back, hard enough to bruise and raise lumps, but I didn't dare to even wince as I tried to push my sore, slashed legs harder, faster, not wanting to be buried in the avalanche of destruction to be pushed down into a watery grave…

A bust of cold. Moving air on my face. I was out of the ship.

I couldn't see Sebastian anymore, but I knew where he was headed, and, continuing to cast my walls as the ones behind me faded out, I kept running –or rather climbing– frantically up towards the upwards-tilting bow –the very highest point of the ship. When I was still far away, I saw something vaguely human-shaped flash across the sky in a huge arc, and amidst the crashes and woeful screams of those still on board, a high-pitched screech of mingled shock, outrage, and surprise. Sebastian had just stuffed Ciel inside a life preserver and chucked him off the ship –if I wanted to survive, I needed to follow.

And so I did.

Taking a detour around the outline of the sinking ship, I fixed Ciel's trajectory and arc in my mind and started running for where I thought he would land, flattening out my walls into one long ribbon as I did. I didn't need height anymore; far from it, actually. As I moved around the rapidly sinking bulkhead, I was no longer in any danger of being hit by falling chunks of debris and/or people, and I tried to hit my stride despite the stitch forming in the vicinity of my left ribs, the water still clinging to me and draining all of my body heat, and all of the wounds, bruises, and fingernail scratches on my body that made me look like I had just been shoved into a barrel full of stones and knives, shaken thoroughly, and then sent tumbling down Niagara Falls.

I scanned the water below, seeing the host of lifeboats floating away from two directions, once being the sides of the ship. Nearer to me, to where the the head of the ship had once been, was a seething, screaming crowd of people that had probably jumped off the bow, just like in the _Titanic_ movie, all fighting and struggling to stay afloat –some of them by shoving down others. The lifeboats were avoiding them, and with good reason; animal instinct had overtaken the people down there, and they would quite literally fight to the death for the smallest chance of survival…hence why they were using each other as stepping-stones to the surface.

Curving my path around them a little, I continued to run for where I guesstimated Ciel to have landed, about fifty yards distant from the screaming, churning horde. I supposed when I found him I could just lower my wall, drag him up onto it, and the two of us could sit, wait, and shiver for Sebastian to come along with one of the lifeboats, saving the day as he so often did. As much as he scared me, and as technically evil as he was, the man –er, demon– was still a wickedly efficient individual.

As I passed over the caldron of churning despair formed by the foam and bubbles of the doomed passengers thrashing about, many of whom still refused to accept their fates as they continued to claw and grasp at each other, I gulped and increased my pace. I couldn't possibly imagine how even I, with my cockroach-like wriggliness around do-or-die situations, could manage to survive if my magic failed and I plunged headlong into that horde. Perhaps, as so many of them were trying to get to the surface, I could duck down and swim under their legs…but that was a chancy prospect, given as if I couldn't swim the distance and needed to resurface for air whilst still underneath that frantic crowd, they would be in an even better position to kick me down.

But the clenched fist around my heart eased as I streaked over the last few stragglers, and I relaxed a little, my breath huffing in my scream-sore throat as the stitch in my side continued to burn, and the lacerations and bruises all over my body began to throb. I was damp with sweat and salty seawater, leeching the heat from my body, and I shivered a little as I began to scan the dark water below.

And then my heart shot into my mouth as my outstretched foot met no resistance at all, and the warm, comforting yellow glow of my magic faded out completely as I abruptly fell through the open air. It was like being on the worst of tower roller coasters, the ones that shot you up into the sky and then plunged you down with no warning whatsoever –except instead of the rock-solid, comforting hold of an all-embracing strap-in seat, this was me plummeting into the ocean with only the shrill whistling of the wind and my own screams to accompany me. It was like a rug being yanked out from underneath your feet, except the heart-stopping jolt of being unsupported went _on and on and on and on…_

The inky blue blackness of the sky and sea tumbled before my eyes as, through my own adrenaline-based shrieking, I heard the distant cries of the drowning masses, which grew louder the closer I got to the water. I had time to vaguely remember something about water-surface acoustics and how sound carried easier across it than almost any other substance, before I hit the ocean shoulders-first with a rough, skin-stinging _smack_ and immediately sank like a stone six feet under.

Raw panic crisped my nerves like lightning as the water closed over my body and I felt my momentum carry me down, so far down, because there's nothing like swimming in the open ocean: absolutely _nothing._

Imagine swimming normally. Everyone's been swimming, right? Imagine being at the local pool or beach. Do you remember that first time you were in over your head as a kid? When you got to the deep end and realized there was no way you could bounce down and touch the bottom anymore? When you could only just float there, supported by nothing but your legs and arms?

Yeah, amplify that times a thousand, and you'll get the feeling I had right now.

The ocean floor was probably a thousand-plus feet below my own, and I'd need flippers, a scuba tank, and several hours of swim time to get all the way down there. There was no concrete wall for me to swim over to and cling onto, no floaty for me to grab, no shallow end or beach to paddle frantically back to. It was just me and a thousand or so other passengers bobbing about like tiny insignificant specks in the middle of the vast Atlantic –small wonder they were panicking. We were completely unsupported, cut off from all aid, and the only things that would keep us afloat in this endless, frigid watery void would be our own four limbs.

Speaking of which, I put mine to good use, clawing and sweeping my way frantically back up to the surface. My nose and mouth burst above the waterline almost a minute later as I flung my head back and sucked in air, _air_ , beautiful, sweet, freezing-cold-as-fuck air, slowing my frantic motions to a more energy-efficient stroke as I bobbed up and down and started wiping the salt water from my eyes with quick flicks of my dripping wrist. I'd need to be able to see to find my way over to my erstwhile employer.

That done, I swiveled around a bit in the water, scanning the nearby water for anyone or any _thing_ I knew: then, teeth-chattering and lips blue, I started swimming off towards where I still guessed Ciel would be, feeling my whole body wracked with shivers. I'd heard the phrase "so cold it burned" _before_ , but never had the occasion to use it myself.

That being said, it felt like every part of my body was on _fire_ , even the parts above the waterline; on fire with cold, like I was enveloped in dry ice. I just thanked god I wasn't wearing anything velvet, which would have dragged me down even further –for fabric-weight-in-water, it was even worse than jeans, or so I had heard from various period novels.

 _'Course my magic gives out **now**._ I thought as I grimly stroked through the water, my limbs shuddering with cold so much it almost impeded my progress. _Couldn't wait until I got to a boat or something._

Though I suppose I should have been grateful that it hadn't happened _completely_ when battling the Reapers and whatnot. That would have been…awkward.

 _Ciel should be around here somewhere…_ I thought after what I guesstimated to be thirty yards, raising my chin as much as I was able. Thank god it was a calm night, or else I –and just about everyone else who escaped the ship, lifeboats or otherwise– would've drowned.

_Oop, there he is._

Shivering almost as hard, if not harder than I was, Ciel was clinging to the live preserver and himself, probably to conserve heat, as he gently bobbed up and down in the water. Knowing my splashing sounds would alarm him at the very least, I made sure to announce myself audibly before I got too close.

"You know, Phantomhive, I'm going to file an official complaint about how your treat your lackeys' vacation time when we get back to shore." I told him flippantly as I swam over, stopping my strokes to grab ahold of the life preserver as well as it sank a little in the water. His singular visible eye moved to me, and a blue-lipped version of his usual haughty sneer attempted to shiver across his lips.

"I-I-I c-could d-do without the sarcastic c-comments, T-Thompson." he said through chattering teeth, and I gave him a smile that was mostly a grimace.

"Just announcing myself, oh overlord and employer." I snipped back, halfheartedly. "Wouldn't want you to kick me."

_Just like Sebastian did when that Bizarre Doll bit him on the leg…oh fuck oh **fuck** don't think about that when your bleeding legs are just dangling in mid-water for all and sundry to chomp on don't think about that don't think about that don't think about-_

I nearly screamed as something caught me across the neck, before I realized that although the force came from behind it was pulling me forwards, against Ciel, and that he was pressing his shivering, soaking wet body against mine.

"We need to conserve warmth until Sebastian gets here." he said thinly, still brusque and businesslike despite the fact that his teeth were chattering like castanets and he was almost literally clinging to me for survival. "Do not presume anything. And you are never to mention this to Lady Elizabeth on pain of death and –and Sebastian."

"Yeah yeah, trust me, I don't plan to. I ain't no pedophile." I muttered, lifting one arm out of the water to wrap around his pathetically thin shoulders. He had the right idea of course –like penguins huddling together for warmth in the Arctic.

It was still awkward as hell.

"Pedal –what?" Ciel asked in a mutter, and I stared over his head for a moment, silently cursing the linguistic drift between _now_ and _then_.

"Uh, someone who likes far-younger people, usually children, for…stuff." I answered awkwardly.

"Ah." was all he said. God _bless_ the Victorians and their ability to dance around literally any raunchy subject ever, and thus their ability to see through even the most oblique of hints in that direction.

A slight, soft breeze, though ice-edged for those of us that were soaked, ghosted lightly over the water, and Ciel shuddered and pulled closer to me, trying to leech the warmth from my body into his own. Though we were in the same water and had gone in at roughly the same time, and there was, technically, more of me to heat, I was still much warmer than he was. Thermodynamics and whatnot; I was older and bigger, with a more developed system. (I'm sure someone science-y could explain it all in a snap, but the exact mechanics escaped me at the moment.)

"God, it's like a cheesy yaoi fanfic." I muttered absently over the top of his dripping wet, salt-encrusted hair as we pressed together, arms around each other and both of us vibrating against each other with chilly tremors, and Ciel made a twitching movement against my shoulder that constituted something other than a shiver.

"Wh-what w-was t-that?"

"Trust me, you don't want to know." I said morbidly, and remembered _Black Butler's_ pairing of choice as I made a rueful, half-amused face over his head. "In fact, you _especially_ don't want to know."

_One can only imagine the loathing-fueled tantrum he would throw if he found out about Sebastian/Ciel._

The earl grunted, his head nodding against my shoulder. I got the impression that coaxing up the energy for speech –or witty banter– was beyond him right now, and I awkwardly, due to the necessity of floating and the rough-edged life preserver between us, wriggled closer to him. The fact that I was snuggling Ciel Phantomhive, who was the kawai-est little shit in existence (though very, very much a little shit), was one of the best things that had happened to me in this world so far, but if I froze to death for the privilege then even I was going to feel just a teeny tiny bit shortchanged.

Suddenly there was a light splash, and a white-gloved hand reached over my head for Ciel. "Oi! Fuck off!" I snarled, swirling in the water and lashing out as hard as I could towards what I assumed to be A) a Bizarre Doll or B) one of the other drowning passengers, groping for my knife inside my sleeve and thanking god it hadn't fallen out in the water.

But no, apparently the universe had decided to go with option C)…which was a very irked Sebastian, who probably did not appreciate being kicked in the hip by a panicking human.

There was a dreadful pause in which I thought he was going to legitimately snap my neck, before his jaw flexed a little and he finished the movement that had startled me, grabbing a nearly-unconscious Ciel by the collar and pulling him from the ring of the life preserver. "I see you survived as well." Sebastian said frostily as he heaved a shivering Ciel completely out of my grip, turning towards a lifeboat that he had somehow towed up to us without me hearing. Despite the neutrality of his tone, I could tell he was _slightly_ disappointed with this eventuality…probably because I had hit him rather hard, for a human anyway, and though ordinarily he could probably withstand a kick from me without batting an eye, he was already wounded rather badly.

"Yeah, tha's me. The human cockroach." I muttered through dancing teeth, accepting his helping hand –or rather, push– as he assisted me in climbing into the boat as well.

"Nevertheless, you have aided me in taking care of the young master tonight, so…well done." The words of grudging praise seemed to have been pulled from the demon like teeth. "You have my gratitude."

"All things being honest, I'd prefer a hot tub, a steam bath, and sixty cups of boiling coffee." I said, attempting witticism though numb lips as I tried to wring out my hair and Ciel coughed beside me several times. "But, um…thanks for the thanks." I then added, more quietly, trying not to seem churlish as I squirmed sheepishly on the seat. From Sebastian's narrowed gaze, there was still a perceptible chance of him grabbing my head and holding it underwater until the bubbles stopped.

"Humans are droll creatures." was the demonic butler's only comment as his narrowed eyes slowly relaxed a little, and his pale lips curbed upwards just barely. "I suppose that perhaps even magicians can act in interests other than their own –whether or not they do come from an alternate reality."

"Been trying to tell ya that for ages." I muttered defensively, and caught the sopping wet length of black fabric as he suddenly chucked his unbuttoned greatcoat into the lifeboat.

"Put that around the young master." he ordered, and I wrapped it around Ciel like a blanket as his thin shoulders continued to wrack and quiver with his hacking coughs. Sebastian's eyes met the gaze of his contractor as a conciliatory smile crossed his face. "I do apologize that I cannot prepare some hot tea for you. Please bear with it for the time being." he said apologetically, as I repressed the urge to say _"What am I, a couch cushion?"_ , for several reasons.

Number One, despite the tentative olive branch that had been offered and accepted on both sides, I had no doubt Sebastian would still take vindictive glee in putting my head through the wooden boards at our feet.

Number Two, Ciel was his master, his contractor, his seven-course-meal on a gilded silver platter, and therefore it was of extreme and utter importance for Sebastian to keep him living, healthy, and reasonably happy.

Number Three, in case I hadn't mentioned it before, there was still a reasonable chance of Sebastian kicking me sixty-five feet out across the water to land in the horde of struggling people and chance my luck with them.

Sebastian noticed the same thing as the cries of the thrashing crowd seemed to grow louder, their panic rising as their limbs began to loose strength. "If we go back, this boat will be dragged down as well. Let us depart." he commented as Ciel looked at the screaming people and shivered, edging closer to me just barely. I scooted closer as well, not out of fear, mind you –I'd already gotten an eyeful of that horde before and their mere screams were not half as worrisome– but in an attempt to continue our penguin-huddle and retain warmth.

Our little wooden craft suddenly surged forward, nearly making me and Ciel lose our balance and fall onto the floor, but it was merely Sebastian grabbing the back of the lifeboat and taking the place of an onboard motor as he began to kick, his legs sending up brief sprays of white foam whenever they breached the surface.

The silence, as we gradually drew away from the woeful cries of the drowning group, was eerie: the surface of sea was as smooth and dark as obsidian glass, and utterly still, except for the occasional ripple and flash of white foam caused by Sebastian's swimming. We were moving slowly enough, after that initial surge and jerk, that the hull of our boat itself barely caused a wake at all, and looking up at the inky black sky, we hardly seemed to be moving whatsoever. It was a jarring shift from the frenetic pace of the night, and Ciel and I huddled together by mutual unspoken consent, both of us trying to draw warmth and comfort from the only other living human in the area. It was like floating in a black void of space, with nothing but us and our vessel to differentiate us from the arctic cold and infinite blackness.

Cold, cold, everything was cold. Even my bruises and my cuts didn't burn and throb anymore, chilled into numbness for the moment. The freezing seawater that I'd been soaked in three or four times tonight –or however many times it was– pierced me right to the _bone_ with its cold, every inch of my flesh feeling clumsy and numb. The only benefit my clothes gave was trapping the few vestiges of heat that escaped me, crusted with drying saltwater and still wet in the folds and creases.

Everything was leeched out of me by that frigid coating of water: warmth, movement, thoughts, all of it. Every movement as I shifted to lean closer into Ciel and keep my balance in the barely-rocking boat was sluggish and slow, and I had to think about it for several seconds before I was able to complete the action, like the odd-half drunk feeling one got with severe lack of sleep, everything coming to me slow and distant.

Ciel's head bobbed against my shoulder, and I realized with a jerk that his hair _crackled_ with the movement, the water soaking his blue-black locks having _iced over_. Alarm took a second to filter through my foggy mind, but when it _did_ my heart leapt, starting to pound rapidly in my chest as I instinctively flinched away, my on-autopilot brain registering a threat connected to the person beside me and trying to flee. I heard a series of crunches from my own hair, and the gentle impact of little ice chips in my lap and on my arm told me that flinching away wasn't going to do me any good at this point. A chill that was entirely mental slid down my spine as I realized that both of us were in very real danger of hypothermia –if it wasn't already occurring– and freezing to death out here.

"Young master!" Sebastian gasped, recognizing the same danger as I had. "You must not fall aslee- _wha?!"_

His preemptive movement to spring into the boat was abruptly halted as he was jerked to a stop and our wooden vessel rocked, his sudden unbalance shifting over to us, and Sebastian's head whipped around to look at his right leg –which was currently clenched in the grip of a female Bizarre Doll. She wasted no time in sinking her teeth into his undefended flesh as the demonic butler grunted and red blood seeped out into the water. In a remarkable display of agility and strength –or at least, it would be so for a human– he swiveled his hips and twisted himself over in the water onto his back, his other leg coming down like a mace and crushing her skull with a gruesome _crack._

"Kuh!" Sebastian grunted, his face a grimace of discomfort, as her once-again corpse slowly slipped from his leg and sank down out of sight, and I –for once– sympathized. The downward force of his leg pulverizing her skull must have also translated into the sharp mouth clamped around his calve, digging the Doll's pearly teeth even deeper and causing even more damage before her mandibles were crushed into slackness. Already weakened from the blow of Undertaker's Death Scythe, the black-haired butler was in no condition to shrug off such damage –or pain– like he normally did.

"These things can move in water?!" Ciel gasped, his own drowsiness purged away by the sudden surge of adrenaline, and Sebastian frowned, his breath clouding the air in short huffs.

"Since they do not need to breathe, it would follow that they also do not drown." he said raggedly, his normally smooth voice beginning to rasp slightly, as if Undertaker had nicked his lung and now the cold and water was increasing the damage to audible levels.

Ciel paled. "That means-"

I panicked and lurched forward, falling on all fours in the bottom of the boat to keep my balance –nothing was working as it should, my muscles stiffened with cold and wounds. I didn't particularly _trust_ my limbs at the moment at all, but as needs must and so on: I crawled towards the bow a little and my numb hand landed on top of Sebastian's gloved one, gripping the edge of the boat to keep himself afloat. "Dude, get in, get in _now."_ I begged in a low, urgent hiss, trying to curl my unresponsive fingers around his wrist and tug, as if that would do a damn thing to pull him into the relative safety of the boat.

"Hush! Be quiet!" the demonic butler snapped almost at the same second, his other hand abruptly shooting up and covering Ciel's mouth as his gaze swiveled out towards the open sea. For a moment, as the two of us instinctively obeyed his injunction, all was silent. Not even the cries of the people who had jumped ship reached us; looking towards where their mass had been, I realized with a shiver that they had all probably drowned by this point.

Another ice-edged gust of wind passed by, and yet still, even as nothing happened, Sebastian's posture remained alert and wary, like a hunting dog whose every muscle was quavering on point. I got the feeling that if something moved suddenly, he would be on it before we could so much as blink.

_Bloop._

_Bloop._

_Bloop._

Sebastian slowly lowered his hand back to grip the boat as what had alerted him finally reached our weak human senses; several small chains of bubbles rising up to pop on the surface.

Bubbles that were increasing in size and number.

_Bloop._

_Bloop._

_Bloop. Bloop bloop bloop._

_Bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop._

"Uh…" I said weakly, shifting my hand to grip the boat instead of Sebastian's marble-like wrist as Ciel and I stared out at the water in horror. "…is that…w-what I think it is?"

Pop-quiz on water physics: what do bubbles coming up mean?

 _Number One: Swift movement._ These bubbles were stationary but growing, not in a line, so it wasn't that.

 _Number Two: Gas or heat rising up from beneath the water._ It hadn't been bubbling when we got here, so it wasn't that either.

_Number Three: Something that holds air allowing that air to escape._

That. That was probably it.

"D-don't tell me…" Ciel stammered in horror, echoing my sentiment, as, like a macabre crop of lettuce sprouting from the earth, heads started to bob above the water: heads whose eyes were covered by a lacy, black, strip of cloth. Their blue-tinged mouths gaped open as streams of water ran out over their slack lips and half-rotten teeth, and the dry, eerie moaning we had become so hatefully familiar with in the last few hours began anew as a crowd of more than _fifty Bizarre Dolls_ floated up around us. "…these are all-?!"

 _"Figlio di una puttana protestante!"_ I swore fervently, mimicking the worst curse my Italian teacher had ever inadvertently taught me as I skittered away from the edge of the boat, knocking the back of my head painfully against one of the seats as I missed my balance on the curved bottom and my arm buckled under my own weight.

"Get in, Sebastian!" the young earl cried frantically at the same time, and wasting not a second of time, the demonic butler shot into the boat just as I heard a set of teeth clash down behind him. He splashed seawater all over both of us as he landed protectively over Ciel, his foot nearly stomping on my hip, and we cried out as, _after_ he landed, the boat suddenly rocked violently, nearly capsizing. Glancing backwards as I frantically extended my arms to brace myself, I saw six or seven Bizarre Dolls hanging off of the back edge, trying to climb in to grab us.

Sebastian grunted, lunging forward to grab one of the oars, laid along the seats, and use it like a pole arm –only without a sharp blade– to bludgeon their heads off in a single sweeping strike as the lifeboat righted itself again. I took the time –and the probably only-momentary balance– to sit up again, only to see a stitched-together hand seize Ciel by the wrist.

"Oi!" I snarled, grabbing and pulling my Colt free as my finger reflexively squeezed the trigger almost before I was done aiming. "You can fuck right off, buddy!"

The Doll grunted as there was a _bang_ and a spray of red erupted from its forehead, splattering the both of us –though Ciel only lightly– as it slipped back into the water and my wrist stung from the recoil of my unprepared and awkwardly-aimed shot. I'd probably only managed to hit my target because of the point-blank range.

"J-just how many of them are there?!" Ciel stammered in the brief respite that followed, and I shifted further, balancing myself a little more as I sat up straighter and put my back to the uncomfortable edge of the wooden bench. Standing, unless one had the inhuman grace and balance of a demon, was very unwise at the moment. My chances of surviving if I landed in that undead horde were even less than that of the drowning crowd of people who had jumped the ship.

"I cannot say…" Sebastian replied hoarsely as he joined us at the bow, keeping his grip on the oar. "However, they will likely _only_ search for souls until their bodies are no more, and that means…that you two are the sole _living_ humans within this vicinity.

Ciel looked at the thrashing crowd, half-hidden in the darkness, and then at the scattered host of lifeboats twinkling in the distance, lit lanterns dangling from their bows and sterns. "Then…we can't run…if we do, Lizzie and the others will be targeted. We can't expose them to danger." he said with gritted teeth, wiping away the smear of blood on his forehead that the Doll I had shot had left as he grimly pulled Sebastian's greatcoat tighter around himself.

"Call it good fortune or ill…" Sebastian stabbed the pole-end of the oar down, brutally impaling a Bizarre Doll who had climbed a bit too high for his liking through the forehead with it. "-they only seem to attack the soul nearest to them!"

"We will stop them here. You can do it, can't you Sebastian?" Ciel asked firmly, and Sebastian paused to throw him a challenging, sardonically amused look.

"You do not need to ask your servant." he said coyly. "Simply command what you will of me."

Ciel looked down towards the Bizarre Dolls, and his mouth thinned as he pulled the ribbon on his eyepatch, revealing the mark of his contract with Sebastian as the demonic butler, anticipating his orders, took a ready stance, holding the oar like he might a spear, "blade"-end down, towards the Dolls.

"I command you, Sebastian…EXTERMINATE THEM!" the earl shouted harshly, sweeping his arm out, and Sebastian grunted in satisfaction.

"Yes, my lord!"

I grabbed Ciel and pulled him back from the edge before he could get his damn head taken off as Sebastian dipped his weapon down and ferociously swung the oar in a figure-eight, popping off the whole head of one Doll like a coke cap and shredding some scalps and skulls of the others, the flat paddle going so fast that it acted like a sharpened blade.

"We will pitch around a bit." the butler said loudly, and the lifeboat rocked as if in response as more clawing hands grabbed it from the water. "Do please hang on to the boat!"

Ciel spooned in the hollow of my body, I curled up and half-rolled under a bench, neither wanting to get trampled by –or trip– the swiftly-moving Sebastian nor get clawed by six dozen undead hands. Blood splashed down on us, feeling warmer than our own icy flesh despite the fact it came from the veins of the dead, and there was a creak of wood _right_ next to my ear as a desiccated hand sunk its nails into the boat, the Doll having reached right over the edge to dig its hand into the lower, inner side of the lifeboat for a good grip. I didn't even realize that one of its sharp nails had pierced the upper curve of my ear until part of my cold-numbed flesh began that familiar unpleasantly-burning itch and I felt the startlingly warm touch of my own blood run down the side of my head.

Sebastian smashed down the Dolls on that side with a diagonal sweep of his oar, and I hissed in pain as the weight of the now-destroyed Doll pulled its own nails free of the wood –and my flesh– and it sank down under the bulk of its comrades.

The little wooden boat rocked violently as crawling, clawing creatures beset it on all sides, their unseeing faces and twitching hands surrounding us as they continuously, despite Sebastian's efforts, crowned the edges of the lifeboat and thus entered our vision.

"How amusing…" I heard Sebastian hiss from above us as his feet and ankles –the only parts of him currently in my vision, as he was standing right above us– shifted and blurred, and there was another gruesome series of crunches and splashing. "Even in death, humans continue to attempt to kick down others to obtain that which they desire." He landed in his new position and swung out again, and more lukewarm blood splattered down on us as I heard Ciel dry-heave, the rich iron tang burning its sweet-rotten stench into our noses. I swallowed down my own gorge and pulled his face into a relatively-clean part of my shoulder, where at least no new blood would gather. "What truly avaricious beings!"

My mouth was half-open in my desperate, half-panicked inhales, and I made a face and almost _did_ throw up as some of the blood from the Bizarre Dolls landed inside it. The sudden taste that overwhelmed my tongue and made it want to curl up and disappear was a hideous mishmash of white-burning-fuzzy-numb-feeling alcohol, dry preservatives, and the half-rotten tang of the blood itself as my stomach lurched, trying to rebel against the frantic commands of my mind. I'd thrown up right beside my own head on a level surface before and it was an experience I never wished to repeat.

More moans, more groans, more crunches, more crackling. I spat out the disgusting, chemical-tasting blood, and squeezed my eyes shut as I curled tighter around Ciel, my frantically churning flight-or-fight instincts and my tumultuous mind in wholehearted agreement as raw panic overwhelmed me and I thought the words over and over again without pause, thinking of neither defense nor attack nor even anything but survival anymore.

_Let it be over, let it be over, let it be over, let it be over, let it be over…_

_***Time Skip***_

After enough time in pain, panic, fear, and sleeplessness, the body sort of goes on autopilot.

_Cold. Cold. Everything's rocking back and forth. Blood in my mouth. Blood in my hair. Blood on my face. Protectively holding onto someone small and warm. Moans and groans everywhere, filling my ears._

Even when filled with gibbering fear, you react slowly. Everything comes to you from a distance. In a way, you transcend to a panic beyond panic. Your brain simply can't handle all the terror and the things bombarding your senses. It shuts down. Only something that is instantly and actively threatening your life will be given attention.

_Cold. Cold. What time is it? Been here so long. Everything's dark. The moon's gone down. The stars are the only thing giving us light. It's so dark. I'm scared, I'm scared. His feet are thumping on the boards around us. Or is it **them** banging against the wood?_

It's like being in a fever dream, or drunk. You can see but everything's coming to you from a distance, like you're watching through a video screen and wrapped inside a thick comforter or duvet. No connection, no sensation. Secondhand. It'd been something like twenty-three hours or more since I last had a wink of sleep, and there'd been so much activity and danger between then and now. Both my body and my brain were on autopilot.

_Cold. Cold. So cold. Everything's ice. I can't feel my feet. Can I move? I can't feel my hands. Will I ever be warm again? I want to go home. I want this to stop. Isn't Sebastian done?_

The whole world was narrowed to the boat rocking back and forth and up and down in violent and unexpected directions, like a mechanical bucking bronco ride, only this was far, far worse, because it wasn't just a fun but tough little ride, this was our entire support system, our _world_ , dipping and righting itself over and over and over again, and my heart lurched up into my mouth with each dip, wondering if it would be the last, wondering if this was when we would capsize and tumble into the gnawing horde of Dolls and the icy pull of the bottomless ocean…

_Cold. Co- Ciel's jacket. No, it was Sebastian's, wasn't it? It's covered with blood but it's insulating us and it's not as cold anymore even though it doesn't cover everything and it's mostly wrapped around Ciel and tangled around us but we're getting warm warm warm…_

The darkness slowly lifted.

Now it was more of an indigo then an inky black.

Now it was the silvery blue of early twilight, and I could see as well as smell the dark splatters of blood landing in and on the boat.

Waiting, waiting, the waiting was almost worse than the terror. How long had we huddled here at the bottom of the lifeboat? How many Bizarre Dolls were swarming us, to keep Sebastian this busy for this long? Had we been here for hours? Had we missed the rescue boat? Certainties become uncertainties with my mere presence, sending ripples out into the canon plotline and changing it –perhaps fatally, like a storm stirred up by a butterfly's wingbeats.

Due to the insulating effect of Sebastian's greatcoat, and the length of time in which we had to dry off, Ciel and I were finally pulling out of our hypothermic states, warming up even enough for my wounds beginning to sting again.

_Dark, warm, rocking back and forth, closing my eyes, scared, scared, Ciel clutching onto me, so tired, so tired, so numb, so **scared** …_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 9.50 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 6th, 2019, 9.31 AM USA Central Time


	46. That Butler, Licking Wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing scenes that involve any of the plot points caught up in the current Phantomhive Twins drama is both fun and nerve-wracking, because Arya has no idea of all the shit that's gone down since the end of the Emerald Witch Arc. The meta knowledge is fun, trying to avoid it jarring with Arya's ideas and expressed concepts of Black Butler, less so.

_Arya's POV:_

_Tok._

Metal bumping against something solid. A piece of flotsam hitting a skull, maybe?

My heavy, swollen-feeling eyelids dragged up over my eyes, and I realized with a dull jolt that I had _actually managed_ to fall asleep due to sheer benumbing exhaustion, despite my terror and adrenaline. Everything was much brighter, and I looked up, registering Ciel shifting to do the same as we peered out from underneath the wooden seat.

Sebastian, standing upright in the no-longer-rocking boat, was breathing heavily, his white-gloved hand clenched tight around the oar he had been using as a weapon and probably using it as a support, despite his straightened back. By the play of light and shadows on his face, the sun had just barely peeped it's edge over the horizon, and it's sharp golden-pink light winked in the blood liberally splattered all over him and gilded his shiny raven hair with a hard-edged glow.

The entire boat, ourselves not exempted, was awash with the chemical-stinking blood of the Bizarre Dolls, and I coughed at the sickly-sweet iron tang that was thick in the air as I involuntarily took in a sharp breath through my nose at the sight of the panting butler and the carnage around us. I did _not_ want to know what the ocean around us looked like, except that it must surely appear like a slaughterhouse's dumping ground.

"Is it…over?" Ciel asked hoarsely, weakly throwing off the flap of the greatcoat that covered him, and hesitantly crawled out from underneath the seat when no response was forthcoming. I rolled to the other side with a groan and then slowly sat up, finally able to do so without bumping my head. Everything ached, and what didn't ache was cold, and what wasn't cold and didn't ache _stung_ , and what wasn't cold, aching, or stinging was _bruised_. Furthermore, the cold and exhaustion had combined into a truly annoying headache, so that I was, in general, probably the sorriest piece of living meat ever pulverized by a catastrophe…at least on the Atlantic, anyways.

Sebastian's grip suddenly slid free on the oar as it clattered to the bottom of the boat, and he fell to his knees, arm wrapped around his bleeding chest, as Ciel jolted and almost climbed over the seat between us and him, crying "Sebastian!"

"The blow of the Death Scythe…was hard, even for me." the demonic butler sighed wearily, his blood-smudged glove pressed over his wound as yet more of the crimson fluid seeped out over his clothing. Ciel looked at the bleeding demon soberly, then lifted his black-gloved hand, gazing at the silver chain of mourning lockets that he had somehow kept ahold of this entire time.

"The Undertaker…what on earth was he after?" he half-murmured to himself, and Sebastian half-turned on one knee to look at them as well, opening his eyes.

"That is beyond my comprehension, but…as long as you keep that chain of hair lockets, I trust you will see him again, young master." he stated heavily, then looked to the side and huffed. "He seemed to have no intention of harming you, young master…but I personally can do without that reunion."

Then Sebastian's eyes abruptly flickered as he leaned forward and began to cough heavily into his free hand, his other dropping to the wood of the boat to support himself. Ciel bit off an exclamation as I watched with an air of detached fascination; seeing the demonic butler like this was as jarring as it was morbidly fascinating, to say the least…like watching a butterfly with its beautiful wings suddenly crushed and torn twitch about on the ground.

"This is the first time I've seen you in such a state…" the earl muttered, echoing my sentiments, and Sebastian grimaced, his hand falling to clutch his wound again as he managed an awkward half-bow from his kneeling position.

"Pardon me for being so ungraceful…I am unfit to be the butler of the Phantomhive Family." he wheezed, and Ciel was silent, his eyes shrouded.

_Hooooooooonk._

The deep bellow of a ship's horn made the three of us turn, Ciel and I looking over our own shoulders, to see another huge ocean liner –proportionally speaking, at least– steaming towards the flotilla of distant lifeboats, highlighted in the golden-rose light of the dawn.

"It's a rescue boat." Ciel commented as the horn sounded again, his voice solemn with relief. A gentle salt-freshened breeze stirred our hair and made the edges of our clothes flap gently, a thousand leagues away from the ice-edged wind that we had endured last night. Sebastian's clothes rustled further behind me, and I looked back to see him lifting his arm to wipe the smears of blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand. He paused as Ciel called his name.

"Sebastian. I can't afford to have the butler of the Phantomhive Family stay in that state forever. Make sure you rest up when we return to the manor." he said as he closed his eyes, as if to enjoy the gentle breeze further. His opened both of them again to gaze at the ship on the horizon. "You did well today."

Sebastian blinked as if astounded. "Young master…" he breathed, then huffed and bowed his head with a sanctimoniously amused smile. "Please stop. I cannot believe I am heading you say these words…I would prefer not to encounter a storm after this."

Ciel snorted as I managed a weak smile and rolled my eyes.

"Right. Well, we need to get closer to those other lifeboats, or its a long stroke home. I can row us in." I said hoarsely, throwing one leg over the seat we had huddled under to get closer to the center of the boat. My arms ached just thinking about it –but we _did_ need to get closer to the other lifeboats if we wanted to get rescued. "Budge over."

Sebastian shifted to the side a little to let me pass, but his eyebrow was raised. "I cannot possibly-" he began in an arch tone, picking up the bloodied oar he had dropped as though preparing to do it himself.

"Yeah, yeah. You're a very stoic, very scary demon." I huffed briskly, standing carefully and putting my hands on my hips. "But I am not trusting manual labor –and our safety– to a man coughing up blood from the hole through his chest. Now gimme that." I dared to grab the oar he was holding and tug, but Sebastian's grip on it was as obdurate as a pair of steel shackles. I met his sardonic eyes and bared my teeth in a growl of irritation. "Boy, _give me this oar."_

Sebastian's eyebrows furrowed in mild amusement, his mouth curling up slightly, and he let me yank on the length of wood for several more seconds before opening his hands and releasing it, the sudden give making me stumble a little as the boat rocked. "As you will, Miss Thompson." he said blandly. "I look forward to seeing your efforts…impeded as you are."

"Oh, go lick a cross." I muttered, grabbing the other oar from where it had miraculously remained laid across the seats and clumsily sliding both of them into their oarlocks. It'd been a while since I had rowed a boat…in fact, I had only ever really paddled a canoe. But as needs must, and all that. (And there was no _way_ I was admitting it to Sebastian.)

"Do we have a _cover story_ for why we and our vessel are covered in blood?" Ciel asked with a disdainful huff as he picked up Sebastian's greatcoat from the bottom of the boat, wrapping it around himself to keep his newly-regained warmth, and I shrugged, biting my tongue in concentration as I dipped the oars into the water and tugged backwards, leaning into the pull with my core as the boat slipped forward just a little. Gentle bumps sounded against the wood on all sides, and my stomach churned as I realized that we were knocking up against the corpses bobbing all around us.

_Oh jeez._

I prayed to anyone who would listen to give me strength as I swallowed my gorge and clumsily pulled the oars back up out of the water, pushing the paddles back behind me as they glinted with a film of crimson-tinted saltwater and droplets fell onto the surface, and then dipped them back under the water, beginning my next pull.

"The –the rescue ship -probably- probably won't care." I breathed, my shoulder muscles already screaming at me for the unnatural abuse I was putting on them as the wounds there stung and burned with a fresh fury. "We're some -of- hundreds."

"I believe what Miss Thompson is driving at is that we are one boat amongst many of the survivors that the ship is picking up." Sebastian said with dreadful dignity from in front of me, having the actual breath to say it instead of largely focusing on rowing us. He picked a long thready strand of bloody something that I _desperately_ didn't want to identify from a fold of clothing near his shoulder and flicked it off the boat. "The staff will likely be overwhelmed by the sheer influx of victims to tend to –if we attempt to blend into the crowd, we shall likely be quickly forgotten. Furthermore, I do not doubt that those "Bizarre Dolls" failed to succeed in injuring a fair amount of our fellow passengers before they got into the lifeboats: we shall likely not be the only ones bloodied, if they did not succumb to their wounds in the interim."

"Hmm." Ciel commented, and for several moments, there was silence, except for my wheezing breathes and quiet grunts as I attempted to row our boat towards the crowd of the ones around the larger ship. I didn't want to admit my inadequacy in front of Sebastian, who was watching me with that quiet not-quite-smile on his face as Ciel attended to the important business of keeping warm, huddled in the bow of the boat and with the breeze blowing right in his face. The demon knew that I was inexperienced at this task, which was easily assumed by the fact that we were moving so comparatively slowly, and I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew that he knew, which made for a lot of stoic resignation in the face of semi-public humiliation.

Many laborious strokes later, we were out of the mangled ring of gradually sinking corpses and slowly but surely moving towards the other ships. My hands –the backs of which bore several raw scratches from certain semi-rotted fingernails– ached from the unfamiliar way I had to wrap my palms around the rough wood and _haul_ , and the muscles of my shoulders continued to twinge and burn warningly with each laborious bend and pull as I leaned forward and straightened, over and over and over again. I was a girl from the bone-creaking-backwoods of Virginia, after all, having lived the first sixteen years of my life in rustic tranquility that, while pleasant and folksy in small doses, was mind-numbingly dull in large ones. My closest experience with waterborne craft was the rare kayaking or canoeing venture organized by school or one of my few friends –and even then I wasn't all that good at it. Pluswhich, canoeing or kayaking required but one paddle, which you used with alternating strokes _or_ just simply partnered with someone else. Rowing a lifeboat required me to use two, much longer paddles, which took an amount of concentration and hand-eye coordination that was unprecedented in comparison to the expectations formed by hearing about or seeing someone else do it.

Damned if I would say anything about it, though. I'd said I'd row us in and by everything freakish and unholy, I was gonna row us in if it killed me.

Numb exhaustion fell over me again, making my stomach lurch and head swim as I continued to force myself to row, the boat crawling forward at what seemed like a torturously incremental pace. All I wanted in this life was to lie down on something flat and sleep until at least the next century –or even longer. My vision was actually tunneling from lack of proper rest, and I practically relied on Ciel's shifting sounds to alert me if and when the boat began to drift off of our course. I was tired, I was so damned tired…

_***Time Skip***_

_Murmurs of sound all around me. Laments, screams of pain, crying, sobbing, gasping-!_

My eyes snapped open, my hands clenching into fists on unfamiliar fabric –loose, starchy, slightly thin– over a hard, flat, smooth surface. Heart pounding in my chest, I squinted against a harsh glare of light and waited for the assault of sensation to ebb and flow back to manageable levels as coherence tumbled back into my brain.

Most of me still hurt, but there was also a harsh, astringent scent floating around me –rubbing alcohol of some kind. I felt the familiar soft, smothering scratchiness of cotton bandages wrapped around most of my body, and the less-privatized skin of my face, neck, shoulders, and arms was slightly damp and much cleaner than I remembered.

All things which argued I had been given competent medical attention. _Alrighty then._

Slowly opening my eyes as I felt my pupils shrink back into manageable levels, I found myself staring up at the white, gilded, and be-chandeliered ceiling of some kind of ballroom.

 _Of course,_ I realized vacantly. _It's a large, open space that's generally full of light –perfect for a sudden emergency overhaul in becoming a hospital ward._

Turning my head, I found that the source of incredible light that had seared my eyes when I involuntarily opened them wide was a magnificent series of glass windows set into the side of the ship level with the floor, which at this moment directly faced the morning sun, which poured into the ballroom with a nigh-on vengeful fury, reflecting blindingly against the dark wooden floor that had been polished slick and shiny and bouncing off of the white walls and white ceilings with equal brilliance. It made my head ache to look at too long, so I closed my eyes and turned my head away again.

Another cursory look around the ballroom revealed that it had been divided into at least halves, possibly quarters, by a series of curtains spread over what I thought was a rope or a line of some sort. "…what the hell?" I muttered, trying to pummel my still-sleep-deprived brain into a state sharp enough to comprehend such an action.

"First, Second, and Third Class have all been separated –says Goethe." a familiar voice came, and I managed not to jump and shriek as I felt something shift and slither _right_ on top of my booted feet –something I had not felt before due to my deadened sense and its lack of movement. Glancing down the length of my body, I saw a harried-looking Snake with a white-and-orange serpent, larger than Donne, swaying about on his shoulders, and another white snake slithering away from my feet to curl around his ankles. "Female patients have also been separated from the males, which is why there is a second curtain here in First Class –adds Keats."

"Ah." I muttered shortly, letting my head fall back onto the pillow I had been provided with. Now that he mentioned it, I did realize that Snake was just about the only male in the proximity –and definitely that there were no other men lying down amongst the other people on the sheets and occasional mattresses laid in rows around me.

I looked up at the ceiling and thought hard: my memories, though foggy, seemed concise enough for me to piece together what had happened up until now –by some miracle of stubbornness and strength-of-will (mostly stubbornness), I had gotten us to the ship, and then, all but drained of practically every vestige of energy needed to remain alive, Sebastian had more-or-less _carried_ Ciel and I over to where wounded passengers were being serviced. (Which was an experience both terrifying and exhilarating –exhilarating because, ya know, a handsome _bishounen_ guy actually _carrying_ me, terrifying because, well, the hot bishie in question was Sebastian.)

My conscious thought ended here, naturally, and I came back to myself and looked up at Snake again. "You okay? Got all your friends off the ship?" I asked hoarsely.

"We're all fine –says Emily." he replied, pale brow furrowing, as I saw his left sleeve shift and bulge in a way that would be unsettling if I hadn't known there were passengers inside. "But are _you_ alright? –she asks. You looked to be in dreadfully poor condition when they brought you in –she says."

His voice altered slightly, deepening a little as he changed his accent subtly and shifted on one foot, tilting his head as his eyes shadowed nervously. "You smelled like blood and the blood of those things –says Goethe. What happened? –he wants to know."

I was confronted with a small dilemma. Given Ciel's… _manipulative_ nature in… _guiding_ Snake into joining his household, I wasn't entirely certain of how much I was or was not supposed to tell him about this event. Granted (as far as I knew), it had nothing to do with the Circus Arc or those involved, but…still.

"I got put through the meat grinder, man." I replied with a winsome smile and an attempt at a flippant shrug, which ended in a wince. _Ow._

"Uh, out of curiosity's sake, did you catch my diagnosis?"

His pale cheeks suddenly flushed right down to the glimmering patches of yellow-smudged scales on them as he half-looked away. "You were in a state of undress –says Emily." he mumbled, his bright yellow-green eyes studiously investigating the far side of the ballroom. "Snake is a man, so he wasn't allowed in this place, and the ladies here squealed when she tried to investigate –she adds apologetically."

I had to snort at that one, but it raised a new question. "Then how come you're allowed to be in here now?" I asked, giving a quick look down at myself. Under the dull tan blanket, I was in a somewhat frothy, lacy white gown that could have been anything from a lady's underdress, a nightgown, or a spare shift –almost certainly donated from one of the higher-class women on this ship, to clothe a poor under-dressed sufferer. It wasn't see-through, but I also doubted it was anything near a consideration of appropriate Victorian wear.

"Smile wanted to know when you'd wake up, and Lady Elizabeth wasn't letting him out of her sight –Keats says." he replied with a timid, hesitant smile as he looked back at me again, as if afraid that I would shriek at him for the impropriety of seeing me in…whatever this was. "The nurses listened to him when he ordered them to let Snake keep an eye on you –he scoffs."

"Nobility has its perks." I shrugged, then glanced from side to side. "Speaking of which, where _are_ my clothes?" I wasn't thinking about _those_ dreary apparel items so much as the weapons secreted within. "They didn't take them or anything, did they?"

My boots were still on, crusty and stiff from dried seawater, so I still had that knife I'd taken from Knox, but as for my Colt and my knife…

A lump came to my throat as I felt my eyes warm involuntarily. The knife I could replace easily, but the Colt was a birthday gift from a valued friend.

Luckily, Snake stalled my impending tears. "They kept your effects near your…bedding place –Goethe says." he said, faltering uncertainly as he tried to name where I lay; after all, it was neither a mattress nor a bed nor a cot, nor even really a Japanese-style futon. "They didn't want to take it away since it might be of sentimental value to you…despite how awful it smells –he adds."

"Flattering." I said with a deadpan look, looking at him in amusement. Snake flushed again and looked away. He was saved from replying, however, by one of the nurses, who I presumed to have seen us talking and rushed over.

"Goodness! Awake already, miss?" she asked redundantly, her eyes round.

"No, I'm resting with my eyes open." I muttered sardonically under my breath, hoping that she wouldn't catch it. Louder, I asked "So what _exactly_ is my condition, ma'am?"

"Well, I'll have to have a look at you again and see for myself." she huffed, brushing down the front of her skirt. I suddenly had the vivid realization that she was one of perhaps two or three females on the ship with even the faintest notion of medical training –ergo, she must be busy beyond belief.

"Sure, go ahead." I shrugged, and she took a step forward, but then paused to throw a significant glare in Snake's direction. He blinked and then flushed slightly, taking a half-step back and holding up his hands as if threatened.

"W-we'll be going now, says Keats." he stuttered. "Smile will be sure to want to know you're awake. –he adds."

His sudden reticence confused me until I realized that to inspect the state of my health, the nurse would probably have to remove the blanket and thus expose me, gowned in only a shift.

I grinned wickedly. "Yeah, you'd better beat it. Who knows, you might even see my _ankles_." I teased, sticking my booted foot out from under the covers slightly and twisting it around, and Snake flushed all the way down to the collar of his prim suit.

"He would never be such a letch! –Emily protests." he mumbled bashfully. Compounding his words with deeds, he sketched a half-bow, half-nod of farewell in my direction before hastily walking off, presumably to tell Ciel about my conscious state. I snickered to myself, smirking, as the nurse busily fussed at my bruises and bandages.

_Victorians are so much fun to mess with._

_"Well_ , I don't know what you were getting up to on that _dreadful_ ship, but it will be some time before you can show yourself in public." she clucked, taking a bottle of what smelled like medical alcohol out of her pocket and popping the cap open as I made a face at the whiff of sharp, astringent fumes. She wet a small square cloth that looked suspiciously like someone's equally borrowed handkerchief and started dabbing at the newly-exposed scratches on my face, which proceeded to sting harshly. "Top of your right ear all but torn in _two_ , I ask you, and a broken nose to _boot!_ You'd best be careful how you sneeze, these next few weeks."

"And?" I mumbled as she dabbed at my cheeks, and she made a face.

"I don't know who or _what_ you were-" Here she sniffed with disdain. "-being _assaulted_ by, but they marked you very well indeed, my lady." More dabbing of alcohol solution followed, going down my neck, before she continued. "A bruise the size of a dinner plate on your right shoulder, _and_ another on the back of your head, and more than fourscore of fingernail markings on you, my lady, _and_ five cuts of a blade on your ribs and pretty cheeks too, poor poppet."

I tried not to seize up in a PTSD-related shock resulting from the British endearment –Oliver had quite effectively ruined the word "poppet" for me for, well…probably forever. The nurse…volunteer…medical lady, whatever, apparently did not notice my (hopefully) minute flinch and kept on talking, which I was grateful for.

"Add a score of lumps on your head and shoulders and a forest of splinters on your back to the tally too, dearie, probably from all the ruckus going on aboard that nasty shop. And some _exceedingly_ ungentlemanly fellow appears to have, _well,"_ Here she paused, and her nostrils flared in a supremely disdainful and offended Britishy sniff, like a chef infuriated by an inferior dish. "-kicked you in the very stomach, hard enough to bruise."

 _Aaaand that would be Ronald Knox. Oh joy. I get to carry his markings around on my flesh for like two weeks –suck that, my fellow bishie-loving fangirls._ I thought to myself with a half-amused, half-cynical sneer. As I had observed earlier, eyecandy anime characters were a lot more tolerable when they couldn't and didn't beat seven shades of shit out of you.

_Probably the source of the knife wounds too._

"So, uh, am I all stitched up and cleared for movement?" I asked, experimentally shifting to sit a little more upright as she quickly pulled back from her ministrations on my shoulders.

"Well," she sniffed again, primly. "I would _highly_ recommend putting on some _proper_ attire before venturing out from the ward, but there is no reason that you cannot, I suppose."

I blinked a little, nonplussed. "Do we, uh, _have_ any proper attire?" I asked, and she sniffed again, turning and beckoning a harried-looking young woman in what was clearly a ship's uniform –probably a ship maid that had been dragooned into the nursing service that the actual nurses with medical training were too busy to administer– as the freckled brunette hastened over.

"Fetch some walking garments for the young lady, if you please." my attendant huffed, and the maid bobbed hastily and scuttled off again, dodging behind one of the gently-waving crisp white sheets strung up around us as curtains. With the assistance of the woman bent over me, I wincingly sat up, grimacing a little as scratches and bruises all throughout my body throbbed in warning. The blanket slithered down my body, baring my shoulders and the upper half of my chest as I revised my assessment –I was _definitely_ wearing some kind of shift or underdress. The frilly garment was too sheer, too filmy, and far too low-cut to be anything else.

I let out a quiet sigh of relief as I saw my leather holster, my Colt, and my fighting knife laid atop one another right next to the…bed?…I was laid out on, before I glanced down at myself briefly and grimaced again. Finding a place to strap those on would be something of a challenge, as the floaty skirt of this underdress hampered the idea of tight leather straps quite effectively, and carrying a gun and a knife on my arm would somewhat freak out the other residents of this ship.

_Eh, I'll figure something out._

The freckle-faced maid scurried up again, a draped sapphire dress filling her hands, one of which clutched a pair of peach-colored kitten heels roughly my size.

"This was generously donated, ma'am, by Lady Hastings, for the passengers of the _Campania_. I hope you enjoy it." she squeaked as the full-fledged nurse took herself off, and I sighed again, gritting my teeth as I achingly placed a hand on my knee and shoved myself to my feet. As soon as I was upright, swaying a little, the maid put the heels down on the ground and pounced on me with ruthless efficiency, barely giving me time to put my arms up cooperatively before she was forcing the heavy velvet skirt down over my head, and I wiggled in vaguely helpful ways as she tugged and fluffed and settled the complicated, frill-lined, billowing dress around my body.

 _Man, servicemen and women are trained hard in this age._ I thought, nonplussed, as she briskly and with great expertise lifted up one of my feet without overbalancing me and pried off my probably soon-to-be-disposed-of boot, replacing it with one of the pale heels, before repeating the same ritual with my other foot.

"Uh, hold on-" I said, making her freeze obediently, and reached inside my boot to pull out the slender knife I'd taken from Knox. Might as well keep the souvenir I won with blood, after all, and at the reminder, I gathered up my other weapons as well, slinging my Colt in its holster over my shoulder and winding the strap of my fighting knife's sheathe around the bared knife to bind the two blades together, since I was hardly going to find something to house Knox's blade in _now_ without displacing my own. When we got to shore, I'd figure something out.

The maid blinked, but apparently the shackles of her training held her too tight for her to dare question a woman (loose term) traveling in the most expensive way possible on, previously, what was the most opulent passenger liner in the world. For all she knew, I was a Grand Duchess or whatever, and could get her dismissed for her impertinence with a mere wrinkle of my poor broken nose.

I gave her an awkward smile and made faint shooing motions with my poor battered hands. "Uh, you can…go now, I guess. I'll head up to the deck for a breath of fresh air." I told the anxiously hovering maid, which was certainly not a lie: the constant background murmur of people crying out in pain, the warring stenches of blood and antiseptic fluids that clashed with the faint leftover wisps of rotting flesh from Doll blood spattered on the passengers, the agonizingly bright light screaming into the naturally dim room, all of it was conspiring to give me a headache.

And that was _without_ factoring in my hunger and thirst. Once my head stopped pounding, I was going to find the resident VIP snack bar and clean the place out –I'd even be willing to down some of their alcoholic beverages at this point, just to ease the dryness in my throat and crackling lips.

The freckled young maid gave me a hesitant smile before jumping and scuttling off at another piercing summons, and I looked around, my standing position elevating me enough so that I could finally see the central staircase that would hypothetically take me out of the ballroom, the elegant, wide staircase rising like a pillar of god out of the polished woodwork of the ballroom floor. Probably by design, the First Class emergency impromptu hospital ward was right next to it, and I cracked my neck (regretting that decision immediately, as it hurt my wounds in several places) before starting forward resolutely, ducking through the billowing white sheets.

It was then that I discovered a new reason to hate Victorian fashion: though I was undoubtably gowned in the height of fashion and all that, pointy kitten heels were hardly conductive to walking when one had been thrown through the metaphorical meat grinder and then spat back out the other end, bruised and battered. My legs ached as I moved, just from the lying on the ground and resulting stiffness and whatnot, and the problem was only compounded by the scratches lanced across my pale flesh, and of course, _then_ I had to balance on _fucking_ heels, which did not improve my forward mobility.

 _Form over function._ I thought grimly, and began to totter/stagger up the steps, out towards the crisp-aired glory of natural morning daylight.

As I neared the landing, a thought made me turn around to take in the great veiw, blinking curiously over the panorama of the ballroom I had from so high up. Many of my fellow sufferers were laid out on white sheets with family and a few scattered nurses attending, and I cringed empathetically. There was a lot of red and rusty brown spattered across dark clothes and prim white sheets of the ballroom –far too much for my comfort.

I wondered if they were making any cases for the Reapers, which by my memory should be fairly busy today, or at least, according to William T. Spears in the manga.

Just as I had that thought, scanning over the dark suits and muted dress colors, I caught a pop of yellow bending over a cot in one of the First Class sections. It was Ronald Knox; with a black eye, a bruised cheekbone, and a busted lip in several places, the patterns of which all matched someone with repeated heavy blows to the face, and even as I gingerly fingered the bridge of my nose I still winced in sympathy. Pun unintended, he looked like death warmed over, and Grell, whose red coat I immediately spotted halfway across the ballroom, didn't look much better off –he moved with much less of his usual exuberance, and every time he bent or twisted in a certain way I saw him wince ever-so-subtly, as though a rib or two was still broken.

There was a brisk tap of something metallic against my shoulder, and I half-turned, then turned all the way around with a gulp as I saw William T. Spears standing directly behind me on the landing, who most assuredly did _not_ look like death warmed over. In fact, he didn't look like he was warmed by anything –least of all emotion.

"You. Magician." he said coldly, and I gulped again.

"Uh, magician's apprentice…sir." I corrected him, faltering before tacking on that last word. Not that I was scared of him or flattering him or anything, but it felt impossible, almost blasphemous, to refer to this man without some kind of respectful address. If Stiff, Clerkly, and Bureaucratic ever became a personification –no, no, a _deity_ – it would take nothing less than the form of this man before me. He breathed coldness and office-boss mentality like a dragon breathed smoke. I was half-poised for him to tell me that the coffee I made for him was weak, my paperwork was out of order, and he was going to have to let me go for repeated failures in upholding company standards.

Spears pushed his glasses back up his nose with two fingers. "The designation is trivial." he responded flatly, pulling me back into the here-and-now. "What is your business here?"

"Uh…rest…ting…?" I said hesitantly, then wished I hadn't drawn it out so much or made it sound like so much of a question. "You know, like _normal_ people do after nearly dying?"

"Grim Reapers require such refreshment as well." he said coldly, before his eyes narrowed slightly. "You were neither dozing, resting, reclining, or sleeping on any of the nearby beds and cushions. As a human, I shall be required to file a report if you are suspected of aiding _that noxious beast_ without being under contract yourself."

I had the _brilliant_ notion that he meant Sebastian by those words.

"-so I would advise you then to leave, as you are closely observing the Retrieval Division at work and further observation shall be assumed as an act of malicious espionage and acted against accordingly." Spears continued in a clipped voice, sounding as if he were reading from a law book word-for-word. His eyes narrowed further. "Working overtime as I am already, I would prefer not to file that paperwork."

He extended his gardening shears before I ever saw the movement as the points of the sharp blades flashed to within an inch of my eyeball, then, before I could so much as gasp, withdrew them again –just to make sure I got the message.

_You are now counted as a demon's ally according to our division. You're suspiciously stepping out of line by watching us work, and continuing to do so will be seen as an act of hostile intent, which will be met with hostile force –which is more effort than I would care for at the moment, though I'm fully capable of doing so. Therefore, begone before I nail your entrails to a tree._

"M'kay." I told him with a deliberately slow, careless shrug, trying not to let him see that he had startled me with that razor-quick movement. As for his threat –well, right now I was all fucking terror-ed out. Oliver Kirkland riding a T-Rex with laserbeams shooting from its eyes and eating everything in sight couldn't have caused a strong reaction in me right now; I was just that done with everything.

Spears nodded coldly to me and pushed past to continue down the marble staircase –I, heeding his advice/threat, took myself off through the paneled doors and continued my journey up towards the deck.

Once there, I squinted in the bright sunlight a tad, but breathed in the fresh, brisk sea air with gratitude, feeling the pounding between my temples slowly ease as I closed my eyes and basked in the calm and quiet daylight.

… _too_ quiet.

I opened my eyes, then flushed and realized with chagrin that the gazes of at least a dozen people around the deck were fixed squarely on me, eyes round. When they noticed I was looking at their looking, my strange audience uttered polite Victorian coughs in a whole range of octaves and looked away again, ducking their heads if female and fiddling pompously with their collars if male. None of them looked panicked, injured, and exhausted, so I was going to guess these were the denizens of _this_ ship, and I was one of the first obviously-wounded survivors from the _Campania_ to start tottering around.

_Oh, joy. I get an audience for my limping constitutional._

I suddenly felt a tingle brush past me, born on a breeze that smelled very much of salt, and abruptly recognized the touch of _magic_ –and not just any magic, but something from a _creature_ of magic. Taking a quick glance around the deck, and seeing nothing on the deck that wanted to call to me in such a manner –or even looked capable of doing so– I pulled the edges of my borrowed dress tighter around myself and tottered on over to the nearest edge of the ship, following that pull of magic that eddied past and tugged at me like a crackle of electricity.

As I got to the rail, the pull became stronger, and temporarily releasing the excess folds of my dress and wrapping my other arm tighter around my chest to hold what little heat I had garnered and keep out the breeze, I carefully gripped the cold brass railing and looked over the water's surface beneath me. Intrigued, curious, and a little worried I might be, but I was not _stupid_ –I didn't lean over the edge.

And there –in a flash of foam on the surface, I saw what must have been doing the summons. Weaving in and out of the very fabric of the water, glimpsed like a clear marble in glass, here an arm, there the body, maybe a swirl of hair every wavelet or so, and effortlessly keeping pace with the ship, was an undine, and, if I wasn't mistaken, it was the very same one I summoned earlier. (Hard to tell when, supposedly, they were all basically identical.)

I gulped, shaking my head a little to clear my eyes as the wind tossed my unbound hair almost right in my face. _Powerful_ magical creatures, unlike fairies, very rarely stopped by to have a friendly little teatime chat. If she was here now, it meant that she wanted something, and in all honesty, I had no idea what that might be.

Which meant it probably wasn't good.

I tried politeness first, attempting to frame my words as my teacher had taught me, like a skald composing a poem, entreating and courteous without being fawning and slimy, as I wasn't wearing my cloak right now and therefore technically had no "authority" in the supernatural field.

 _Storm-chaser, powerful sister of water, whose dominion is held over all the oceans and waters of the world, why do you seek me here, aboard this vessel of iron and steel?_ I tried, _thinking_ the words as hard as I could down at the water, and received my answer in short order.

_Not seven leagues from here there lies another vessel, whose passage was marked by thy footsteps, and that now has drifted to the floor of the sea. Trash spews from it and covers the pure water, and flesh unclean and unfit for eating falls like snow down from the surface. What part hast thou played in this?_

She didn't sound terribly pleased for that inadvertent seafloor pollution, and I swallowed again, trying to gather my thoughts for placating her. Being _literally_ part of the ocean, an undine could sink a ship even as big as this with more ease than I could snuff out a candle, or, more likely, drag me _specifically_ down to an untimely watery grave.

 _It was no intention of mine, I promise you that._ I tried, wetting my lips nervously as I glanced from side to side, hoping to avoid notice from the other people bustling about. _It was the evil machinations of other land-dwellers, whom I and my, um, employer sought to thwart. Regretfully, we were unsuccessful._

There was a moment in which she did not respond, before a sudden raw, brisk wind sharply blew my hair back from my face, strengthening the smell of salt and seaweed and making my nose twitch. As it was dying down, she spoke to me again, her melodious voice cold in my ears. _Look to see that it happens not again. Thou hast spoken with courtesy and offered an exchange, as is proper, in our previous dealings, and so thine life shall be spared on this account. But look not to the sea if thou finds thyself coursing down prey once more._

As clear as if she had hung up a phone, it was clear our conversation was over, and I watched the surface of the sea and waited as the tingle of magic slowly faded from the edge of my awareness.

_***Time Skip***_

Ciel hadn't been able to pry himself from the limpid clutches of a worried Lizzie and her family until nearly noon, and it was only then that I was summoned to the dining hall to (presumably) debrief our experiences.

I regarded the duo across the snowy white tablecloth glumly. Ciel was as posh and perfect as ever, likely thanks to Sebastian's laundering efforts, with his only injury being the ankle he sprained in the Second Class Dining hall. He moved a little stiffly, courtesy of the iron brace now clinging, limpet-like, to the outside of his stylish boot, but the metal was dark and the leather was darker, so it was hard to notice the contraption.

Sebastian, of course, was as utterly perfect as ever, his silky raven hair elegantly tousled in what was probably a calculated amount of messiness, reveling in the freedom from Ciel's Aunt Francis's strict slicked-back regime, and not a scratch or a smudge dared to mar the demon's eerily beautiful face. His newly-scrounged-up uniform was impeccable, crisp white and smooth black garments clinging to his strong, lean frame like they had been tailored for him specifically. You'd never know the bastard had survived a zombie horde and a Death Scythe to the chest less than 24 hours previously.

And then there was me, of course, sitting across from the duo, bandaged like a mummy and with the non-gauzed parts of my face and arms an attractively splotchy purple-black from bruises. How very morally uplifting.

"The ship has turned around to return the injured survivors of the _Campania_ to England, so it seems we will not make it to America after all." Ciel hummed as a beginning, sipping appreciatively at his warm tea. I sympathized: memories of last night _still_ made me ache for heat, and I was cradling a fragrantly-steaming cup between my own bandaged hands.

"Eh, don't really care." I mumbled with a shrug that tried to jar as few injuries as possible. "I wasn't all that looking forward to it anyways."

 _Especially since I knew we'd never get there._ I added silently.

"Mm." Ciel put his cup down and got right down to brass tacks as Sebastian's eyes shifted minutely, lifting up from the table and starting to flick subtly across the room, wary for interlopers. "You were there when Undertaker declaimed his mad scheme. As a magician, what would be your opinion on the information we learned?"

I looked down into the glossy amber surface of my tea and swirled it around a little. "He's fucking insane."

"I don't need _you_ to tell me that."

"Well, no, I mean –it's just not right." I fumbled. "He is –was– a Grim Reaper, and we all know how seriously they take their job. For him to leave, that's fine, but for him to start messing around with Life and Death –there's something he wants, and he wants it _bad_ , or else he's just gone, like, completely off-the-chain snake-fuckingly crazy."

Ciel's cold blue eye hooded slightly in exasperation. "I _also_ don't need you to tell me that."

I briefly raised both hands from my teacup, palm-out in a defensive motion. "Hey, you asked, man. I'm just thinking out loud. Why would a Grim Reaper take orders from humans, anyway –those Osiris people? He was _definitely_ pulling the strings with Rian Stoker, but then he was talking about getting a "scolding" for us interfering in the experiment of how many people would be killed by the Dolls. Even a snake-fuckingly crazy Grim Reaper is _way_ above the paygrade of some human mad scientists, even magical ones, so it doesn't make sense that he has to answer to someone for what he did with the Dolls, which _he_ says he made."

Ciel's eyebrows twitched upwards slightly. "Assuming he was not misleading us with false statements, perhaps there is another supernatural being or beings in accord with him?" he suggested, and Sebastian's eyes twitched over to us again for a brief moment.

"Unlikely, my lord. Most creatures distrust Grim Reapers, even retired ones, and such a cohesion would lead to rumors the active Reapers would have already heard and started to investigate. They seemed quite as surprised –by all his information– as ourselves." he said with cool authority. "Any other opinions?"

I bit my lip gingerly, then shrugged. "I –I dunno. The whole thing with the Cinematic Records –I don't know how to counter or fiddle with that or _anything_. I mean, I get what he did, _kinda_ , but...there's no way in hell I can think of how to repeat it or anything. That's major-level soul studies and shit I don't even –I don't even _know_ , man. This thing is way out of my league."

Ciel's eye twitched slightly as he folded his hands under his chin and regarded me over them. "So you are completely useless, in this case."

I glowered at him. "I'm only an apprentice, _boss_. You want a full diagnosis, go to a _real_ magician." I thought for half a second after that statement, then grimaced. "Actually, don't. All the magicians in this world seem like they're assholes."

"I'm abundantly aware of that."

After a moment of oddly tense silence following Ciel's statement, Sebastian sighed and leaned back just the barest tinge in his lacework restaurant chair. "In summation," he hummed as he laced his white-gloved fingers together and laid them on the table. "We do not know the truth of Undertaker's statements on board the _Campania_ regarding his Bizarre Dolls, beyond the likelihood of his methods of creation being reported as actual fact. Miss Thompson is without the experience necessary to make a coherent or insightful analysis of Undertaker's actions, nor confirm them as absolute truth. Currently, we have no leads on his activities, plans, or current location, save for the chain of morning lockets the young master was able to snatch from his person." His dark eyes moved to Ciel as he said this. "I will begin investigating the moment we get ashore, my lord. Have you been able to ascertain anything from the contents of the lockets?"

Ciel rummaged in his pocket, then laid out the chain of silver lockets on the table. "There were names and a lock of hair in each one, some more recent than others. I did not recognize any of the names." His blue eye moved to me. "Are there perhaps any traces of magic in it?"

I swallowed hard. If and when people enchanted personal belongings, they also generally included various kinds of traps and defenses geared _specifically_ to bite back against other magicians probing into the spell matrix…and anything Undertaker cast (could Reapers even use magic in the traditional way I knew?) was bound to be _intensely_ fatal when messed with.

"Uh, I guess I can check."

I spent a few moments staring at the spill of silver lockets across the table, just psyching myself up, before tentatively reaching over and not-quite-touching one with a finger. Hopefully, if Undertaker had enchanted it, and if (which was almost certain) he included some kind of magical defense into that enchantment if he _had_ , I would be able to sever myself from the little flicker of magic I was using to inspect it _before_ the backlash could do something unpleasant to me. If I was actually _touching_ the damn thing when a defensive rebound happened, my chances of reacting in time dropped sharply, and infinitely close to zero.

I closed my eyes and let the tingle of my magic flow through me and out my extended finger like a wand, coiling like a gentle breeze over the metal ovals laid out along the table, all strung together with a strong but slender steel chain. There wasn't anything on the surface, which could mean nothing, and could mean everything. Generally, spells that were layered on a surface could be peeled away, with enough skill, and so defensive spells rarely were: it was the ones that were embedded, made into the very fabric of the object, that you _really_ had to watch out for, and since the only way to find such spells was to probe with a finger of magic, and defensive spells were designed _specifically_ to be triggered by the contact of that, I would have to be _very_ careful with the following bits of my investigation.

Gently, tentatively for every flick of my will, I pushed my magic deeper. There was still nothing.

At length, I disconnected myself from the lockets with no small measure of relief and took a huge, soothing gulp of my lukewarm tea.

"Nothing on the chain, nothing on the lockets, nothing on the names or hair _in_ the lockets, and no residual magic from any removed spells thereof." I reported as I came up for air, and Ciel frowned a little, looking down at the innocently-gleaming tangle of metal on our table.

"Then why would he keep it? Even going so far as to call it his 'treasure'? What use does a Grim Reaper have for such things?" he mused incredulously, and Sebastian tilted his head a little.

"The purpose of mourning lockets is to keep beloved ones close to your heart. Perhaps there is something to Miss Thompson's suggestion that Undertaker has a powerful motive in attempting these blasphemous resurrection attempts." he suggested, looking surprisingly un-condescending for once as he referred to me, too busy appearing thoughtful as he spun out ideas from his demonically-devious brain. "Grim Reapers are capable of emotional attachment, are they not? It may be that Undertaker has lost a person or persons beloved to him, and is attempting to return them. A perfect form would naturally be the only acceptable option, hence his attempts to perfect the resurrection and his apparent distress at his inability to manufacture pure souls."

"True, but where and for what reason would he become attached to any humans?" Ciel huffed skeptically, reaching for one of the small teacakes on the three-tier platter in the center of the table between us.

Sebastian shrugged elegantly, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other. "I would not know, my lord. It may not even be humans he is attempting to recall from the veil of death. Reapers have ample opportunity for associating with other creatures beyond human understanding, do they not? It is possible he wishes the love of another supernatural being."

"Grell certainly does." I muttered into my teacup, and caught the subtle twitch at the corner of Sebastian's eye with a smirk.

"All that aside, there is nothing that can be done now, so I suggest you two humans spend the time recovering your strength before we land once again." Sebastian suggested, leaning forward again and uncrossing his legs, clearing ending the conversation, and I raised an eyebrow.

"Out of sheer dumb curiosity, what _would_ you do if Grell, uh, pressed the issue of becoming involved with you? Like, his fellow Reapers couldn't hold him back?"

Sebastian blinked once, obviously somewhat taken aback by my odd question, then arched his own brows and, oddly enough, looked inquisitively to Ciel, as if for guidance. The earl's expression twisted in surprised affrontry.

"What, _I_ don't care!" he snorted, waving a dismissive hand at Sebastian. "Do whatever you like to the blasted man, I have no orders in that direction."

Sebastian nodded slowly, once, as if confirming the information to himself, and then turned to me and offered an absolutely angelic smile.

"Something unspeakably horrific, Miss Thompson."

I huffed out a grin. "That much, huh?" I snickered.

Sebastian's beatific, closed-eyes smile did not change. "He grates on my soul, should I have been lucky enough to possess one. I would rend him in two, and other equally-violent things that I regrettably cannot discuss in the company of a lady, even one so hardened as yourself."

Well alright then.

_***Time Skip***_

We'd spent some more time discussing things and plans and whatnot, but Sebastian, as usual, had summarized everything perfectly: there wasn't anything we humans could do now but rest and recuperate, and _later_ jump into a gung-ho investigation of Undertaker's nefarious activities. To that tune, Ciel had nabbed a few cabin rooms for us –apparently, I would be sharing with Lizzie, whereas he, Snake, and Sebastian would all be crammed into another suite, and the rest of the Midford family in yet another cabin, since space was even more at premium than usual onboard ship, what with several hundred extra passengers being added onto the usual carrying capacity. The earl had even bespoken baths for all of us, and while it would probably only be the usual traveling sponge-bath, at least I would have _some_ opportunity to get the crusted salt out of my more hard-to-reach regions.

Personally, as I stripped down in the miniscule bathroom with the basket-sized tub of steaming water beside me, I couldn't wait to get back to the manor. The shift (definitely a shift) I wore under the dress was nice, but without the drawers and corset a typical Victorian woman would wear, things were much breezier and looser than I was used to. Even covered by two layers of clothes, I felt oddly exposed.

After carefully unwinding my bandages and folding them atop the tiny scrap of a nightstand-countertop –having gone through similar injuries, I knew how to re-apply them after I was done– I twisted my hair up into a messy sort of bun and skewered it with one of those ridiculously long, sharp hairpins (those things could be used as a deadly weapon, man) that I had found in my pocket, and, catching my reflection in the oval bit of mirror as I moved, leaned over counter, gazing deeply into the mirror.

No wonder some of those other passengers had jumped when they saw me.

My nose was alright for being broken –you couldn't even really tell, except that every inhale I took through it hurt and smelled of blood. Nah, my _real_ problem was the knife slash starting just beneath the left corner of my mouth and striking a long, shallow, diagonal slash down to beneath the same side of my jaw. It matched a short, shallow gash on the bone of my right cheek, both dubious souvenirs of my fight with Knox.

As the nurse had said, when I gingerly pulled some hair away from my right ear, the top curve of cartilage was wrapped in gauze, but I could definitely feel the throbbing pain of a wound underneath, along with untold numbers of bumps and bruises from collisions with falling… _everything_ during that one last panicked escape out of the ship. There was a very large bump on the back of my head, too, probably from when Knox had kicked me into…from one of the walls he had kicked me into, and a larger bruise on the lower right back of my head, probably from that boiler I had almost concussed myself with.

I turned, craning my head over my shoulder and wincing at what I saw in the mirror.

The bruise on the lower right of my head matched a spreading network of purple and black on my right shoulder, which was nearly accented with a three-fingernailed bloody scratch that ran perpendicular to my neck, and a more defined one that ripped its way from the nape of my neck to halt beneath my left armpit. It was the longer of the two, and was sloppily bisected by an even _longer_ fingernail/claw mark that sliced diagonally down from my left shoulderblade to end just above my left hip. I had tried to protect my back from the Bizarre Dolls, but evidently my adrenaline had lied to me in saying I had escaped with it unscathed. There were dozens upon dozens of small red bloody dots, too, evidentially remains of the splinters that had been plucked out of the flesh of my back –none were worrisomely large, though.

My limbs, on the other hand…were pretty bad.

There was a six-inch-long scratch down my outer left arm, and a diagonal three-inch one across my inner elbow –and how the hell had the Doll even _managed_ that!? More predictable, of course, were the perfect set of deeply-sunk fingernail imprints on my wrist, and the jagged five-nail ripping slash across the back of my hand, but it still beggared belief to me that a Doll had been able to get so far inside my guard so as to slash me on the inside of my arm.

Then again…I had been twisting and turning a lot. I'm sure the inner parts of my arm had become the outer, exposed ones at some point or another.

Being the dominant hand that held the pointy or shoot-y weapon, my right arm was probably the most unscathed bit of me, minus my face and upper torso. There were only two clawing marks from the Dolls' hands on my arm, though they were both doozies, one stretching from the outer edge of my wrist to down just below the outside of my elbow, and the other ripping its way from below my armpit to just past the inner edge of my elbow.

I turned back around again, gingerly smoothing my hands down around my bare stomach. Like the nurse woman had said, there was a large, vaguely-oblong bruise coloring the place just below my sternum, and as it turns out, I had not been as successful at blocking Knox as I probably thought I had been in the heat of the moment –though I'd still gotten off easy. There were only three new knife slashes on my torso: a straight cut just below my ribcage, a light graze from my left hip to just above my navel on the right, and another going down from the left and towards the inner edge of my right hipbone. They looked superficial, and trust me, I could tell you a thing or two about knife cuts, especially when it came to them being performed on me.

That was the end of my Knox-related injuries, though: as I twisted and turned in front of the mirror, inspecting every inch of my poor abused body, everything else marring my flesh was from the Bizarre Dolls; four sets of fingernail marks on my left leg, two of them being embedded-grip puncture wounds like the one on my left wrist, one vertical scratch slashing down the front of my left leg from thigh to calf, and a more angled one starting at the front of my hip and trailing off to just behind and below my knee.

My right leg fared worse, with three short sets of crosshatch nail marks caused by Bizarre Dolls hitting me in the same place more than once from different directions on the outside of my leg, starting just above and ending just below my knee, another horizontal dragging slash across my hip, a diagonal mark on my inner knee and slashing in towards my calve, and a mere short scratch across the inner left front of that same knee, probably from either a different Doll or a briefly extended thumb.

All of my wounds, bandaged or otherwise, reeked of antiseptic, which only made sense. Bio-contamination from normal people? Meh. Contamination from wounds made by corpses? Huh-uh. No _way_ was I walking out of a med bay without enough alcohol to satisfy a drinking convention hosted by, by every alcoholic anime character ever. I made a mental note to return to the makeshift ward at some point, or at _least_ raid the gentlemen's Smoking Lounge for some alcoholic beverages to dump on my wounds.

I cringed as I looked at my small tub of bathwater, then sighed and picked up one of the fresh towels, dipping it in and wringing it out.

This was probably going to be both messy and slightly painful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 10.18 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 7th, 2019, 9.52 AM USA Central Time


	47. That Butler, Homeward Bound

_Arya's POV:_

Luckily, I had finished dabbing and scrubbing myself clean and reapplied my bandages when Lizzie came back into the room, and was in fact just in the process of wiggling into my shift, so at least she wasn't flashed by the bruised and much-bedraggled image of another naked woman.

Then again…I wasn't at all certain as to the extent Lizzie had been exposed to such things before. While the Victorians were uptight enough to have a poker rammed up their collective rear ends, they were oddly lax about a few things: since lesbianism wasn't really even a concept they understood, being ever so much more unimportant than _the love that dare not speak its name_ (since lesbianism involved females instead of males), Lizzie could very well have participated in communal bathing or something of the sort with other very-much-naked women in a spa town or whatever.

I wasn't going to ask, and I was going to err on the side of caution.

"Oh!" Lizzie blinked and held a hand to her mouth as her enormous green eyes grew even larger. "Ciel said we would be sharing a room –but you _poor thing!"_

With much bemusement, I allowed myself to be chivvied over to one of the two beds by a curly-haired pipsqueak barely up to my shoulders, who was herding me and chattering with all the formidable willpower and experience of a mother who had a bevy of toddlers to look after.

"Good gracious, your hair is an absolute fright!" Lizzie huffed as she kneeled behind me on the bed, legs primly tucked up under her equally-borrowed skirt as she began methodically running a soft brush through my hair. "I can't believe you managed to _survive_ , being stuck on that horrible ship!"

I grimaced to myself. "It was a trick, I'll tell you that." I said with a weary half-sigh, half-groan, my aching shoulders slumping downwards.

"Well!" Lizzie chirped, tugging her brush harder through my hair with a forceful expression of cheer. "We don't have to worry about that anymore, do we? Its home and hearth for us, well, less so for you, I suppose, since you aren't really from England, but now you can rest up in your room at Ciel's estate and get all nice and better!"

The younger blonde kept up this exuberant, half-inane flow of soothing chatter as she brushed through my hair, then began to wind it in and out in a loose braid, commenting on commonplace things, the cute dresses she saw on other girls aboard the ship, how _strong_ Ciel was to have come through the whole ship's sinking with only a twisted ankle, how brave the rest of her family had been, how glad she was that her maid Paula wasn't on board with all those _frightful_ things, and how very grateful she was for me helping her and Ciel.

She went on about Ciel at great length. Though I still held my own personal reservations at the concept of being engaged at…well, whenever the two of them had been engaged, it was far too young for such things, it was clear that Lizzie cared about the Phantomhive Earl deeply. I was pretty sure at least some of the affection went both ways, so that was…cute.

I blinked as she lamented the death of her uncle, Ciel's father, and half-turned quickly, staring at her as Lizzie fell silent and cocked her head.

"Wait a second." I did some quick mental calculations. "Since Ciel's father is your mother's brother, which makes you his niece and him your uncle, that makes you and Ciel…cousins."

"Yes."

"…and you're gonna be married."

"Yes?"

"… _ew_."

 _You know what, I take back what I said about Ciel and Lizzie's engagement not being all that gross. Victorian customs be damned, that's…just ew, man. Is it wrong to hope Sebastian devours Ciel before they get to the consummation part of their marriage?_

_***Time Skip***_

After the prerequisite squawking and shrieks that greeted us upon our return to the Phantomhive Manor –Mey-rin in particular seemed appalled at my injuries– died down, life settled back into its normal routine fairly quickly. Now that I wasn't frantically cramming –in a manner of speaking– for a shoot-out, I could pick my studies back up and focus more on the long-term goals of mastering magic and getting home in one piece. Snake and I hung around in the library whenever either one of us had a scrap of free time, studying and reading, and occasionally sniping literary quotes at one another in the drowsy silence when both of us were present. Occasionally I was dragooned into other tasks with the servants, since I wasn't a snooty bitch and wanted to help out the people who had welcomed me into their home and shared their bedroom with me (in the case of Mey-rin), and it was kinda fun, in some cases, to see how Victorians prepared their meals and so on, how different it was without any kind of modern technology.

I was digging deeper into the magical fabric of this world: my journal-cum-notebook was filled with arcane scribbles and sigils, and I had _painstakingly_ pieced together the proper runes for Eurasia, most of Africa, and the entirety of space and all other nether realms tied to this dimension. I was getting closer, maybe not _quite_ halfway yet, but well on my way to the end result, certainly, and things were only going to get easier as I moved along, what with the decreasing amounts of sigils I had to find. My ongoing tab and annual monthly payments to the simulacrum's shop ensured a steady inflow of magic books –I must have nearly a hundred of them by now– and, with the lack of impending danger (what with the next arc being the whole thing with Weston College) I was free to spend most of my time bent over my books, studying and scribbling.

And it was thus that I missed out on the entire Easter exhibition –or at least, only heard the shrieks and noises of exertion outside the library– and only glanced up from my work later that evening, when a groggy-looking Snake weaved his way into the library.

"Dude, are you okay?" I asked, seeing him flop limply into his favorite armchair by the window without exhibiting any of his usual care in sitting down, what with the likelihood of a snake or two being tucked away inside his clothes.

"We…we were playing an Easter game with Lady Elizabeth and Smile and the others…and Charles Phipps played a wretched instrument…says Keats…" he groaned, his eyes still a little swirly.

I winced in sympathy, even though it was a _little_ funny. "Ouch, dude."

"Mm." he grunted vaguely, head flopping back to stare vacantly at the ceiling, eyelids drooping. "We're just going to stay here…and rest a bit…says Donne…"

"M'kay." I hummed, looking back down at my work as my pen resumed scratching across the page. I was onto something in this book of intermediary spells that I _thought_ might be extremely useful…if I was reading this ritual right, and it wasn't a deliberately mis-copied formula, this was a spell that would act as something of a search engine for me: in other words, _exactly_ what I needed. If I used this correctly, I could simply input the generals of what I wanted and get a specific rune in return, and from that, it was but a short step to bind in the forbidding sigil and create another rune to square away in my masterspell bag.

"Miss Arya!"

The door banged open, and I whipped my head around and _shushed_ Mey-rin vehemently before doing anything else –Snake twitched a little in his armchair, but remained asleep as her eyes widened behind her glasses and she guiltily clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Miss Arya," she tried again, much softer. "The young master wants to see you in his study, yes he does."

I sweatdropped. _It never fails._ Just as soon as I was on the track of something good, Ciel had to go ahead and interrupt me.

With a sigh, I got up and tiptoed with Mey-rin out of the library, leaving Snake curled up in his armchair and all my magical books safely closed. Most of them were in Latin anyways, with a few Greek –I had bartered the language from a dryad in the frantic scuffling days before boarding the doomed ship to America– so there was a pretty good chance that, even if Snake was nosy and peeked when he woke up, he wouldn't be able to read any of them. Then again…you never knew. Snake just might have conned the language somewhere, and it was better to be safe than sorry.

I winced a little as I set off in the familiar direction of Ciel's study: most of my bruises had faded, the slices and scratches scabbed and vanishing, and what with it being less than two weeks, my broken nose was functioning but still tender –I was still a sorry sight to see, that was for sure. At least my earlobe had healed, though there was a faint discolored spot to remind me of where the Bizarre Doll had nearly given me a new and gruesome piercing.

Knocking respectfully, I got the go-ahead and entered, blinking a little in the bright candlelight as Ciel, tea in hand, looked up from his desk, and Sebastian, standing before him, stepped aside a little to look at me.

"Ah, Miss Thompson." Ciel hummed without prelude. "In what direction would you say your talents lie?"

I blinked a little, taken aback. "Uh…what? Sir?"

"Talents, Miss Thompson, talents." Ciel tapped a fingernail impatiently against his ceramic teacup. "Art, intelligence, sports?"

_Shit._

I knew where _this_ was going, and rubbed the back of my head. "I guess…I'm not that great of an artist, but the whole intelligence and the martial aspect…I could play those up if I had to. What's happened?"

"A duke's son has gone missing at Weston College." Sebastian answered promptly. "The young master must, by virtue of it being an establishment exclusively catering to the sons of aristocrats, investigate this and other disappearances at the school in his own person, which shall limit his movements. He would like to place at least _some_ of his eggs in another basket, as the saying goes."

I blinked. "Wait, _what?!_ You want _me_ to go there too? Not just, like...spy it out or something?"

Ciel raised a single eyebrow. "Is this a problem?"

I groaned and drew a hand over my face, trying to be patient. "Uh, dude?"

"Yes?"

"...I'm a chick. You know, a girl."

"This is painfully obvious."

"Woman. Female. _Homosapien_ of _genus ubera debent_. Not a guy."

Ciel gave a weary sigh, closing his eye as he did. _"Again_ , Thompson, your point has been made clear." he drawled with clearly worn patience.

"In case this important fact has escaped Your Lordship's notice," I said, glaring daggers at him as I put both hands on my hips. "-the school you intend me to mutually infiltrate alongside you is an exclusively _male_ establishment, except for the Dorm Mothers, of whom I am both far too young and far too inexperienced to fake being."

Ciel opened his eye again and returned my glare tit for tat. "I am fully aware of that, Thompson, and I am tired of feeding you breadcrumbs." he said icily. "You have magic and, though not demonstrating it now, a rudimentary grasp of cunning and strategy."

_Ouch._

"Bamboozle your way in however you deem fit without obstructing my investigation. Hypnotize the headmaster. Hypnotize the entire _school_ , for all I care, to ensure yourself an opening."

He taped a velum envelope on his desk with one finger, scowling at me all the while as I seethed and tried not to lose my temper and/or say anything foolish. "I have been accepted into the Sapphire Owl House. I don't care how, I don't even particularly care when, but _get yourself into one of the other three houses._ Violet Wolf, if at all possible. All the students vanished from Scarlet Fox have, allegedly, being transferred there."

Ooh, but holding my tongue was hard. "This is an elite school for the British nobility, and in case you haven't noticed, I am an _American_ , you little-" I began hotly, but Sebastian tactfully interrupted before I finished that sentence –probably luckily for me, all things being said.

"An easy exemption would be to falsify records stating that you are the long-lost scion of a fictional family of great standing, now long-demolished with the vanishment of the only heir, the many-times ancestor of your branch. A family friend or nobility-based relative has suddenly discovered your roots and, filled with the desire to better yourself in the manner of your ancestors, you have returned to Great Britain to learn from this prestigious academy, whence so many of your forefathers have drank deep from the well of wisdom." he said with great eloquence, stating my supposed family history with a mockingly sanctimonious solemnity. "Once that has been accomplished, it shall be easy to influence the minds of staff and school to allow you entry."

"Uh-huh." I said flatly. It was a cunning, perfect, practically watertight plan, and I wanted to punch him in the face for suggesting it. Why did he have to be so damn _right_ all the time?! "Except you have conveniently forgotten to devise an equally devious excuse for my obvious femininity."

"Oh for God's sake." Ciel scoffed, slapping his letter down on the desk impatiently. "Are you or are you not a magician, Miss Thompson? Can you not shapeshift? Can you not cast any manner of illusion or charm or hypnotism to disguise your true form?"

"Uh." I figured this probably wasn't the best time to mention that _no_ , I hadn't really _done_ any illusion-casting, just the theory behind them...and the suffering of several unwilling illusions on my own part. Not fun. _Really_ not fun, since they were illusions to cover bruises and broken nails. "I...guess?"

"Good. Dismissed." Ciel said bluntly, looking back down at his papers. Had Sebastian been human, even if he had still been as much as a smug asshole as he was now, I probably would have looked at him, shrugged, and made several _are-you-kidding-me_ motions at Ciel's bowed shoulders and bent head. But since he was a demon, I merely scowled, shook my head to myself, and tromped on out of there.

_Okay, so, illusions, right? How hard can it be? 'S not like I don't have an actual thorough grounding in this knowledge…for once._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 10.24 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 7th, 2019, 9.54 AM USA Central Time


	48. That Butler, Planting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small disclaimer, I made up all the students' names unless they've already been mentioned in the manga, inasmuch as I went through wiki and picked off names from the British Peerage page in roughly the right time and with complete disregard to whether or not those historical people existed or went to Weston/Eton. Charles, I think, was definitely made up in his entirety, because his dad never had children, but I wouldn't swear to that

_Arya's POV:_

Approximately a week or so after Easter, a hackney carriage pulled up to the prestigious Weston College gate, on the bank of the river Thames. Out stepped a young gentleman in a smart black morning coat, vest, top hat, and green tie, with an emblem of a rampant lion against a green background embroidered on his left lapel. He was tall but rather slender, presenting an image of rather-effeminate lankiness, though his shoulders were strong underneath the cut of his prim black uniform. The young man also carried a strange-looking rucksack, one of obvious high quality but with much evidence of hard usage, in his right hand, and with his left he held his top hat securely on light blond hair cut short at the nape, looking up at the hallowed gate with shaded honey-brown eyes.

I sighed and shook my head, wrapping a little more of my apocalypse bag's straps around my hand as I looked back down and started forward.

The amount of spellwork I'd had to cast left, right, and center left me a bit techy as I glumly plodded into Weston College grounds: not only did I have to finagle another illusion over myself to appear male, I'd had to run around for a solid three days falsifying documents about a lineage I didn't have, and _then_ find out the Weston College schedule and climb up a belltower on a day I knew all important personnel would be on-site, casting a net of selective forgetfulness and implanted memories over the college grounds and all inside. And _then_ I had to go to Nina's tailor shop and order a custom uniform for the Green Lion House, since illusions worked only on the eyes and did not in any way change the fact that I did _not_ have the hips or the chest of a young man. (And **_then_** stay for the other fittings that I apparently needed, like for a rainy-day academic robe lined with green, a white sports suit with piping in my house colors, and a night shirt and trousers.)

So I was running a bit on fumes as I tromped along the pristine cobblestone path towards the church in the center of the grounds where I was, allegedly, to accept my enrollmanship in this school or whatever.

I slowed, frowning a little. Granted, the church shouldn't be _that_ hard to find, but…well, all these old, prestigious buildings looked the same, with warm Gothic brickwork covered in tastefully trimmed-back ivy, and irritation upon misdirection, all the school house buildings had belltowers attached, so the bells could be heard near and far as they rang the hours to call the boys to school, and I couldn't simply find the building with the steeple and go from there.

"Hey," I called to a small knot of similarly-uniformed gentlemen passing along the path in the opposite direction. "You guys know where the church building is?"

A series of bewildered blinks greeted me, before the whole lot gathered around, all talking at once, voices overlapping.

"You're American?"

"What are you doing here?"

"That insignia –you're a member of Green House?"

"Are you new, then?"

"Oh my, they'll let _anyone_ into Weston now." (This coming from a snooty-looking brunet in a red tie.)

My eye twitched. "Uh, yeah, I'm fresh across the pond, enrolled at Weston to learn what my ancestors did 'n all that. I'm on my way to, uh…accept my school bonds or whatever? Could one of you lot point me towards the church so I can get on with that?"

With sighs ranging from regretful to dismissive, most of them trailed away, leaving a single freckle-faced young man with auburn hair alone with me. Since he'd been the only one with a green tie, I figured it was because we were in the same house, and shrugged, following at his heels as he beckoned me towards a slightly different direction.

"So, what brought you to Weston?" my new companion –who looked to be about fifteen– asked me curiously, looking over his shoulder. I frowned a little, irked at having to rely on Sebastian's cover story, but quickly smoothed over my expression before answering.

"A while back, a family friend called to tell us that apparently our pond-skipping ancestor was some earl or whatever that destroyed his family branch with his absence. I know I'm a bit late," I kicked my leather shoe against the smooth path. "-what with being seventeen and all, but I figured it'd be best to try and take in some of the hereditary wisdom of my English ancestors, y'know?"

I winced to myself. Surely that'd been laying it on a bit thick, right?

"Oh, I see!" my companion laughed immediately, making me blink. "Weston College is the most prestigious school in the world! It was quite wise of you to try and better yourself with attending once you realized your true roots –American schools are such _rubbish_ , you know."

"Mm-hm." I commented.

"I can certainly see why you were sorted into Green House now: Americans are quite martial, are they not? Have you ever fired a gun?"

"Mm-hm."

"I say! How absolutely splendid! Well, guns aren't allowed on school grounds, so I'm afraid you can't show that off. Is it true that _all_ Americans are so very fond of guns?"

"Mm-hm."

"Have you ever killed anything?"

"Yeah." I said, thinking of the necromancer and trying very hard not to think about anything else related to that particular chapter of my life.

This stream of curious babble kept up as the younger Green House member led me across the expansive school grounds, inquiring all about the things I had done in a desperately stereotypical, well, _male_ manner –what had I killed, how had I killed it, had I gone hunting anywhere especially dangerous, had I ever fought a grizzly, did anyone I know fight in the American Civil War, how many guns did I have, what had I used, what did I think of sport (this I mumbled around, since I only knew for sure that baseball had been invented at this point in history) and so on and so forth. This kept up all the way until he had delivered me at the imposing church doors, and took his leave with one last hasty wave before pelting along the paths, apparently late for class.

I swallowed as I opened the carved wooden portal and was faced with my first glimpse of named characters: namely, the four prefects, Lawrence Bluer, Edgar Redmond, Gregory Violet, and Herman Greenhill. This last one was to be my prefect specifically, and I gave him a short, curt nod as he approached, more out of nervousness than anything.

"Welcome to Weston College, Thompson." he said gravely as we shook hands. "I trust your journey here was comfortable?"

"Tolerable, sir." I answered with as much politeness as I could muster. "I look forward to educating myself here at Weston, the most learned school in all of Europe."

 _Remind me to scrape the taste of sycophant off my tongue later._ I thought with an inward cringe. While it was all too easy to alter the memories of another person, doing so too blatantly or on too wide a scale was not recommended. The illusion of _belonging here_ , the idea running through the back of the prefect's (and others') brains that I was a person who was welcome in this establishment and that there were factual records detailing my familial line, it was a fragile one, and something that would be easy to sunder with enough concentrated thought and focus. I had to grease the way towards continued belief with my words, and as such, act like a walking billboard to the virtues of Weston College and anything else that might be required of me, never giving the surrounding students and teachers a reason to doubt the truth of my situation, or even think about it too much, at least until my position here was secured and embedded in their thoughts through habit.

Greenhill nodded once, himself, and ushered me forward deeper into the imposing Gothic structure: I followed him and the other prefects as we climbed the stairs and entered into what passed for the headmaster's office, but what was really more suited towards being a chapel in and of itself. Behind a small flight of steps sat a dark-haired man in a long, black academic robe and square hat, who peered at me gravely over his folded hands.

"Our school is a prestigious public school protected by tradition and discipline. Now that you have entered its halls, we must ask that you obey its rules." he began in a sonorous, practiced voice. "Typically, the headmaster would be the one imparting his wisdom to you here, but as he is terribly busy, I shall act as his substitute. I am Johann Agares, Vice Headmaster."

The four prefects stood at attention. "In this school, the first and last word lies with the headmaster." Greenhill said briskly.

"And here at school, his word is absolute." Redmond added.

"The headmaster has entrusted us prefects with complete autonomy therein." Bluer continued.

"A rather disagreeable role, having all manner of tiresome matters forced upon us." Violet grumbled.

"That has been the tradition of our school since its founding." Agares said, lowering his chin onto his hands. "And…"

 _"Tradition is absolute!"_ the four prefects finished in unison.

I swallowed hard, and the Vice Headmaster nodded slowly to himself, reaching inside a drawer to withdraw a thick ledger. He laid it on the desk, then carefully locked eyes with me. "Do you vow to obey the code of our school and observe our traditions and discipline?"

"I do." I answered firmly.

"In that case," Agares said as he rose and proceeded down the stairs, opening the book. "Please offer your signature here."

He whisked a white feather pen out of his robes and handed it to me, and I signed, smirking a little as I saw Ciel's name written on the line just above mine.

`Ryan Thompson.`

"Welcome to Weston College, Thompson." Agares said as he closed the book, and we shook hands. "We embrace your presence among us."

_***Time Skip***_

"What is your knowledge of English schools?" Greenhill asked as he led me in another direction off across the ground. Being the prefect of my house, it appeared that he would be my nanny for the rest of my orientation…however long that took.

"Next to none, sir." I replied promptly, power-walking behind him to keep up. The blond prefect talked fast and walked faster, moving with the determined speed of a devoted athlete, to whom there was never really _not_ a moment when he wasn't practicing for _something_. "Schooling in America is much more…lax."

_And I'm not going to mention the fact that I haven't really attended any kind of educational **anything** in a while._

"Well then." He primly adjusted his tie to lie just a tad more perfectly on his chest, not slowing his brisk pace. "Public schools are places where boys thirteen to eighteen years of age devote themselves to their studies while living together in dormitories. Starting with the labyrinthine school building, Weston College's vast grounds also include the chapel, which we have just vacated, and four storied dormitories, each one belonging to a particular house. Upholding tradition and bound by the strictest discipline, the all-male boarding school lifestyle and sophisticated education by way of an individualized curriculum yields true English gentlemen. Sparing no thought for the school's prohibitively expensive tuition, all aristocrats desire to have their sons matriculate to this school in order to obtain its vaunted status for themselves."

"Good job my family still had the money for it, even if we moved to America." I said, cutting off any potential line of thought the prefect might have had before it could gather steam in an inconveniently inquisitive direction.

"Yes…in any case, given as you have been sorted into the Green Lion House, informally known as Green House, your studies shall tend in a different direction than those lightweights in the other houses." Greenhill continue, lifting his chin a little. "We pride ourselves on our physical prowess, and our house focuses on creating officers and gentlemen that Great Britain would be proud to place on the front lines. Do you plan to stay in our country after graduation?"

"Hmm…" I pretended to think about it, hoisting the strap of my bag over my shoulder. "I'll grant that I've never felt all that fond of America in _particular_ …I've been living within a German diplomat's household these past few months, you understand, which was why I was thankfully already in Europe when the message reached me, and a very good friend of mine there was an officer in the Prussian army…"

Which did make me think. What rank _did_ Prussia hold in his own military? I don't think he had ever been blatantly in charge of the whole thing _or_ chucked on the front lines like so much cannon fodder…but then again, one never knew. I felt like it would be a breach of protocol to just stick the personification of one's nation in an average, middle-ranked position, but there were dangers inherent to both other sides of that argument, placing him higher or lower, and I knew that at least Prussia, in particular, would never sit for being held in the safe territories as a figurehead.

I drew my mind back to the current conversation with an effort. "Anyways, sir, I have been, uh, jolly interested in Europe thus far, so I think perhaps I shall." I finished, and Greenhill nodded slowly.

"The Prussians are such military innovators, are they not?" he observed without rancor. "Your experience may serve you well. In any case, we practice mainly in terms of sport here. What do you play?"

Ooh boy. Now _there_ was the ticklish question: I knew there would obviously be heavy importance placed on the cricket tournament later, but the fact still remained…I still didn't know dick about shit when it came to cricket.

"I've whacked a baseball around a couple of times," I replied flippantly, shrugging my shoulders a little. "-but other than that, I really haven't had time for…sport. It was mostly military tactics and history with my caretakers."

"Mm. Very well." he replied gravely. "I believe it would be best to remedy that gap in your education, would it not? I'm sure the Housemaster will have some suggestions. For the meantime: you have the rest of the day to arrange your effects and learn the particulars of your schedule. The entirety of students' lives here are governed by the sounds of bells: a bell will sound for each activity commencement. Being late will cost you at least one Y, potentially more, depending on the incident. For each Y, you must copy out a Latin poem of the prefect or Housemaster's choosing, depending on which observes your misdeed, one hundred times. Turn-out for the dorms is 6.30 in the morning –I understand Americans operate on different time than the rest of us?"

Here Greenhill turned a little to bestow a slightly uncertain gaze upon me, the first sign of tension I had seen yet from him, but I waved a hand breezily. "I've been in Europe for some time now, sir. I know how to keep your time."

The blond prefect nodded several times, obviously reassured. "Very well then. An early-morning tea will be served at 7.00, to keep up our strength for studies, which commence in the school building proper, at 7.30 AM. First Period Recess and therefore breakfast follows at 9.00, after which is fag time. Are you aware of this tradition?"

In actual fact, I was, and believe it or not, that wasn't because of _Black Butler_ and this very arc. When I was younger, I had loved and devoured all the works of the author Roald Dahl, who wrote such timeless classics as _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ (and its sequel _Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator)_ , _Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The Twits, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG,_ and _The Witches_. These all typically included young children against fantastical backdrops that mixed the bizarre and the commonplace into a whimsical adventure, but what I learned the word and operative duties of "fag" from was, in fact, his autobiography _Boy: Tales of Childhood_ , in which Roald Dahl described his experiences with the British boarding school system, including the hellish abuses that those above fags could visit down on their lackeys. One particular anecdote that struck me was about Dahl being forced to sit in the outdoor lavatory on a half-frozen toilet seat during winter to warm it for a prefect, who was so impressed that he kept using Dahl for the same job all winter, until Dahl got into the habit of bringing a book with him at all times to have something to do while warming the seat, saying in his autobiography later that he _"must have read the entire works of Dickens"_ during that winter.

_"At Repton, prefects were never called prefects. They were called Boazers, and they had the power of life and death over us junior boys. They could summon us down in our pyjamas at night-time and thrash us for leaving just one football sock on the floor of the changing-room when it should have been hung up on a peg. A Boazer could thrash us for a hundred and one other piddling little misdemeanors –for burning his toast at tea-time, for failing to dust his study properly, for failing to get his study fire burning in spite of spending half your pocket money on fire-lighters, for being late at roll-call, for talking in evening Prep, for forgetting to change into house-shoes at six o'clock. The list was endless._

_…I am sure you will be wondering why I lay so much emphasis upon school beatings in these pages. The answer is that I cannot help it. All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed literally to wound other boys, and sometimes quite severely. I couldn't get over it. I have never got over it. It would, of course, be unfair to suggest that **all** masters were constantly beating the daylights out of **all** the boys in those days. They weren't. Only a few did so, but that was quite enough to leave a lasting impression of horror upon me."_

So yeah, I knew about fags. Granted, I was _pretty sure_ Weston College did not condone caning, if only because that would constitute physically striking the offspring of noblemen, but I was also fairly certain their methods of punishment (aside from Ys) were unlikely to be _that_ much less harsh.

"I've got the gist of it, sir." I hummed absently, looking out over the other top-hatted gentlemen wandering over the grounds, carefully never straying from the white stone paths and onto the lush green grass, a sharp contrast from modern schools, where I knew students would be strewn all over the lawn in varying states of relaxation.

"Well, given as you will only be two years from graduation, despite being new to our school, it would be foolish to designate you as a fag at this point. However, I would also ask that you go easy with the underclassmen and your requests to them, given as you have not had the time to build a rapport with our younger students." Greenhill said, and I nodded. "Continuing, 10.00 is Fag Time specifically, in which fags run errands for upperclassmen and we, generally, focus on our studies. Following that we return to the school building at 11.00, where we continue our lessons until 14.00, where the school bell rings for Afternoon Break. At this time our students generally rejoin for a hearty tea and practice our sport: at 17.00 we rejoin to practice cricket exclusively, being as it is the sport of true gentlemen, and at 18.00 we return to our respective houses for a heavy supper, and study and receive tutoring from our Housemasters from 19.00 to 21.00, at which point we retire for baths and bed. Lights out is at 22.00, and you may not, _under any circumstances barring alarm_ , stray from your room after that time, until morning 6.30 turn-out. Any questions?"

"How would I learn the particulars of my schedule?" I asked, which was a fair question in my estimate.

"I would put that question to the Housemaster, who will be present in his office from 19.00 to 21.00 unless otherwise engaged." Greenhill replied without missing a beat. "Anything else?"

"Seems pretty straightforward." I said, and followed it up with a lie. "I can't wait to get started."

_***Time Skip***_

Unsurprisingly, the Green House dormitory was the one closest to the sports pitch and various other playing fields, and as Greenhill gave me a guided tour of the dorm, I saw many other indicators of, how to put this… _house personality._

In other words, there was sports gear _everywhere_ , and nary a book in sight: most of the walls had weapons displays pinned up against them, ranging from mundane to exotic, and beside the rather small library was a much-larger fencing room that obviously saw heavy use. Even in the dorms themselves, as Greenhill took me to the fifth-form hallway, the bedside tables and window desks were littered with small chalk bins, cleaning cloths, swords of various kinds, cricket balls and bats, and other sports equipment.

I sweatdropped a little as he dropped me off amongst who would soon be my roommates, lecturing several of them on keeping fencing foils in their rooms before sweeping out the door.

_I feel like I'm going to drown in testosterone-laden stereotypes before this undercover job is done…_

Nevertheless, I hastily paid attention as my roommates introduced themselves to me, pasting a smile on my face.

"George Frederick Stanley, sixth son of Frederick Stanley, 16th Earl of Derby." said a dirty-blond boy with a rounded, pleasantly stolid sort of face, saluting me.

"Charles Gordon the Second, only son of Charles Gordon, 11th Marquess of Huntly." said a slightly-darker brunet, shaking my hand.

"Victor Pleydell-Bouverie, son of Edward Pleydell-Bouverie, 4th Earl of Radnor." added in an even taller boy with glasses and a friendly smile, which belied his muscular arms and strong grip as we shook hands.

"Ar- _ah!_ Um, Ryan Thompson, son of American bluebloods and now, apparently, scion of a long-lost British line." I said with a self-deprecating laugh. "I look forward to learning with you lot."

_***Time Skip***_

It didn't take me long to form solid opinions on my three dormmates, even in the scant few hours they spent in the room before rushing off to attend classes and practices at the _clong_ of the bell overhead. Victor seemed to be a serious, studious young man that had escaped being assigned to Blue House only by the skin of his teeth –and an interest in archery and more modern hunting (modern being the very loose operative term). George was a blandly, neutrally-beaming presence that served as a sort of grounding wire to the tempers of everyone else in the room, and a keen amateur sportsman.

Charles, I darkly suspected, was a bit of a rouge, with a somewhat irritating sense of humor that was _just this side_ of pushy, who laughed a just a _little_ too loudly and harshly when I brought my few magic books out of my bag, and whose jokes as we puttered about the room were just a _smidge_ too insensitive. He would bear watching.

But eventually they all trooped away, and I was free to pull out the letter Ciel had sent for me once he'd been firmly established here, flopping down onto my rather comfortable bed and reading over it with interest.

* * *

`Fellow Botanist,`

`Now that I have moved to the city, sadly, I have had less time for gardening: however, I have gone to work cultivating a window-box of bluebells, which has livened up this dreary atmosphere somewhat. I don't suppose you are having any trouble with those dandelions you mentioned in your last missive? Truly, its so difficult to keep weeds from spreading. I don't support you have any secrets as to how they move around?`

`–Your Fellow in the City`

`PS: Though my address has changed, I see no reason why you we must change our schedule. My usual courier will dispatch my notes posthaste, and you in turn may employ your traditional messengers.`

* * *

I saw where he was going with this. "Bluebells" of course meant the members of Blue House, and "dandelions" Green House and its inhabitants. Ciel was framing our notes like they were merely normal letters sent to and from a couple of random Victorian pen-pals (who happened to be aficionados of gardening, of course), so that if anyone picked them up, they'd dismiss our messages as irrelevant. He was also obliquely asking if I'd gathered any news on the missing students yet, and explaining how we were to exchange messages: I'd send mine with a magic pigeon or something, and he'd use Sebastian for pickup and delivery.

Well, too bad for Ciel, I hadn't found anything yet. I mean, sure, I _knew_ already that Greenhill and the other prefects had reacted just a bit _too_ harshly to Derrick and his co-conspirator's bullying and murdered the lot of them, then hastily summoned Rian Stoker to patch them back together as Bizarre Dolls, but since there was no _way_ for me to know that yet, in-verse, I wasn't planning on letting Ciel know that I knew. I'd have to poke around Green House a bit, then send a letter off to him explaining what little I was bound to glean, and he'd just have to be satisfied with that.

 _Alright then. Let the investigation begin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 10.37 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 9th, 2019, 10.20 AM USA Central Time


	49. That Butler, Entrenching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugggh having to flip through the five manga volumes that cover the School Arc to find all the relevant details of what Arya's exploring is a PAIN IN MY ASS. And I know whenever it gets adapted into the anime they're going to do something different and I'm going to be retrospectively schooled and look like an idiot for getting such BASIC DETAILS WRONG, HOW COULD I MISS THAT. Especially the colors. I dread to see how I describe the colors wrong. But meh, whatever. I can always go back and rewrite all the lovely details I got wrong, unless they're plot relevant, in which case I say screw the anime, this is the manga world and things are skewed just a little bit different. So nyeh. 
> 
> Also I'm looking forward to see them animate it, if only because it brings us that much closer to my favorite, the Emerald Witch Arc. Sieglinde is so adorable.

_Arya's POV:_

I spent most of the rest of that day carefully sounding out the lay of the land: how the hallways in the Green House dorms were configured, where all the special rooms were –library, dining hall, common room, fencing room, etc.– and how they linked up to all the other hallways. Once I'd had Green House thoroughly mapped out (short of invading other people's dorm rooms, at least) I scuttled off under the afternoon sunshine to continue learning my way around the area.

First things first, the focus of this arc, the cricket pitch.

Since Green House quite literally loomed over the edge of the grounds, it was a simple task to duck out through the back door and stroll across the lawn, noting with interest the shaded porch in the modest two-story building that served as the locker room for these wealthy players. I could easily imagine picnic tables and tents set up around the edge, giving the players a place to lounge and relax before they started whacking balls at each other once more.

A large rise of tiered stadium seats ringed the circular field, topped off with flagpoles, though right now only plain white flags flew on the masts, interrupted by the two buildings for the players, on opposite sides of the pitch. Wooden boards formed a bulwark along the lowest part of the seating, keeping the elevated stands protected from errant balls, and in the direct middle of the pitch was a small slot of pale sand, littered with incomprehensible lines and with a few weird, rattle-like sticks stuck in either end. My knowledge of cricket was not sufficient enough to recall their exact name and purpose, but I remembered the end goal of both sides was to knock them over –there was probably someone practicing soon, which was why they were set up already.

Thoroughly going over the stadium took up about an hour, since I was prowling places that I wasn't even sure I was technically allowed to go, like under the stadium seats and into the locker rooms…er, buildings, and around the balconies that ringed them, and down along what I thought were servants' paths.

Standing on top of the stands had shown me that there was another cricket pitch farther off, across a small but clearly ancient wood of magnificent trees, some of which grew to the height of the stadiums, and so I eventually popped out of what I was pretty sure was a service door and began winding my way through the very picturesque copse, looking up at the gently-swaying branches of sun-dappled oak and maple and wondering appreciatively what they would look like when the leaves began to turn color in the fall.

The second stadium seemed to be a carbon copy of the first, save that it was slightly farther away, and my curious rummaging was a lot faster, in part due to memory, in part due to the fact that it was tending towards meal time and to the best of my memory, the pitches would soon be crawling with sporting gentlemen all trying to practice their game at once.

I conscientiously made sure to avoid even the _thought_ of straying off the paths as I wandered back towards the trimmed lawns of the college proper –though it made me grimace, I would have to be on super-ultra-best-behavior for the entirety of my stay here. As mentioned, I couldn't afford to give my surrounding teachers and students the chance to think too critically about my existence at Weston –an American aristocrat showing up out of the blue, with no references, no open spot in the student roster, no word-of-mouth proof of my heritage and almost no paperwork of the same, and honestly, no real concrete reason to _be_ here. To the best of my knowledge, even if I had been some long-lost scion of British nobility, almost every American in this time period would still have chosen to enroll back at Yale or Harvard (if they even existed at this point), or, if I absolutely _had_ go to a European school, one in a place with strong ties to my life thus far, like Germany and my hypothetical diplomat-mentor's _alma mater_. The Revolutionary War hadn't been _that_ far back, after all –barely a hundred years. People would still have grandparents –maybe even parents– that fought in it, or at least knew of it, and passed their hatred and prejudice down to their children. Me enrolling here made no sense.

Hence, my little memory-fudging spell. I wasn't attempting to alter _actual_ memories, even though that was surprisingly easy due to their fluidity –because doing so even a little bit wrong could fuck up someone's brain big time, and I'd have to do it individually, which would have taken _forever_. I was just simply casting the magical equivalent of a foggy veil over the entirety of Weston College and their thoughts in my direction, gently encouraging their minds to turn aside from the _weirdness_ of my presence, pleasantly fuzzing out any _"hey that's not quite right"_ feelings in my direction and running a whisper like a subtle thread in the back of their brains, subconsciously telling them my cover story and that it was a legit one.

The problem with this method, of course, was that even a smidgen of critical thinking would bring it all crashing down. The spell wasn't designed to stand up against concentrated thought, so if someone's mind was actually brought to bear on me and they began to ponder on my identity and why I was here, the magic laying over their mind just wouldn't be able to keep up, and they'd brush it aside like so many cobwebs.

Thus, I was on my bestest best behavior, determined to do absolutely nothing to give anyone a chance to think critically about me ever, or even think about me _at all_ , if I could help it. My hopes in that direction had failed in the past, so I had a backup spell that amounted to an urgent memory-wipe, but I _preferred_ not to use it if at all possible, since Undertaker was probably somewhere on the grounds, and I had no idea to what extent he could sense my magic. Reapers _seemed_ to be able to trace and immediately identify the magical aura that marked me as a sorcerer, same as Sebastian, but I was unsure just how far this aura extended, or if it left a "scent trail" as I went about my business, or how much using magic would amplify it. It was quite possible the Undertaker already knew I was here and was cackling at me from the nearest secluded window.

I swallowed hard. I certainly hoped not: I had yet to learn exactly _why_ the Undertaker had done what he'd done with the Bizarre Dolls and whatnot, and I hoped never to learn personally. It would be just fine if I found out safely ensconced on the other side of a monochrome manga page or a TV screen, and much less so if I was confronted by…well, _whatever_ diabolical plots he was working, face-to-face. The fact he seemed to be striving for perfection of his Dolls was indicative of many things: he talked about perfecting them in this arc, using their longing for the future to create false memories congruent to their reality to add onto the ends of their Cinematic Records (as opposed to nonsensical images of a posing and prancing Grim Reaper) and thus enhance their intelligence and their mimicry of normal human sentience, but his end goals were just as foggy as ever.

The problem was Undertaker had that "mad scientist energy" in spades just by being his natural creepy crackly-voiced self, so it was equally possible to assume he was merely tinkering to tinker or that this was some deep, convoluted scheme to bring back someone important to him. I couldn't think of any other reason to raise the dead: mad science and recovering the lost seemed to be the only motivations for necromancy _I_ ever knew, since "creating raging murderbeasts of destruction for combat purposes" slid under the umbrella term of certifiable mad science. The third option, of course, in which case one did such things for profit and glory, was utterly stupid when used in line with Undertaker, since I was pretty sure he was functionally immortal and as such had no real _use_ for money and fame, being as he could acquire oodles of both merely by waiting patiently and letting his assets accrue.

Bah. This was making my head hurt. It wasn't going to come up any time soon, so it wasn't any of my business. I needed to focus on the here and now.

Holding that thought firmly in mind, I stepped across the grounds, gripping the brim of my top hat a little to keep it from falling off in the brisk breeze. First things first, I needed to find out where the other dorms were, in case of an emergency and I needed to contact Ciel –or Soma, whom I understood would be showing up sometime soon as well.

Some military campaigns had probably been conducted with less attention to detail and intense planning: I started my investigations in my own way, by going over the Weston College grounds with a fine-toothed comb, placing as many locations as I could and mapping out the grounds as much as I was able to fix them in my memory. I'd been in too many places where a wrong step could ruin everything, relying on others to show me around and lead me out of danger: I was, by heaven, going to plot this area out, at least. From fire to zombie apocalypse, I planned to know every inch of the Weston College grounds by the time I left them, and thus be able to navigate them to the best of my mortal ability.

Also I was geeking out a little. As far as I knew, this college didn't exist in the "real" world, my world, and it wasn't as if I would ever be given another chance to enter into a prestigious British college as a student –if I ever wanted to attend, for some reason, Oxford would probably frown and moan a bit about me not finishing high school, amongst other things. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore a place rich in history, education, and anime relevance, and I would be damned if I wasn't taking it to the fullest.

And it wasn't like I didn't _need_ to learn my way around, too. Once I'd finally gotten to the main school building, fully large enough and with enough corners and twisting, angled wings to form a Victorian escape palace (was that a thing? Escape rooms that were more than one room?), it took me most of the rest of the day, with only a quick dash back to Green House dorms to snag some dinner, to solidify a very _general_ idea of where everything was in my brain, and even then I wasn't quite sure of where certain rooms were or what a few rooms I _did_ know were even _for_.

A quick pitstop in the Green House office to learn of my schedule arrangements with the Housemaster, a stern-faced older gentleman with dark goatee and hair cropped in a military buzzcut, left me with the knowledge that since I was an American (subtext being _not that good at Proper British Things™)_ my schedule would again be subtly adjusted. At this point, most of the _normal_ students at Green House had a curriculum they'd been following for years, and as such had a daily schedule aligned to their specific needs, inasmuch as one could be when the school had such a rigid structure. They had specific things to practice during freer hours of sport and study, and specific tutors to help them along in that task, and here I was, flopping down into the middle of things barely two years _(including_ this one) from graduation. It was alright for Ciel, _he_ was a first-former, starting out at the beginning, but it was taking every scrap of my quickest wit and dubious charisma to keep this very stolid gentleman's mind off my magic-based shenaniganry.

"I know Latin, French, Greek, and German well enough to converse-" _And by god was that won with hard sweat and blood, even when I used magical cheating._ "-and I can pop off a quick shot with my Single-Action Colt revolver. I ride well, and I have a firm grasp of strategy. I was fostered in a military household these past six months, and had close associations with a Prussian military officer and a German diplomat." I said, in answer to the _"Just what are you good for, educationally speaking?"_ question, which the Housemaster had phrased far more tactfully. "A number of other diplomats, many of military bent, also visited that household and conversed with me."

"So would you say then," the Housemaster began, looking languidly through his files as I began to sweat a little, knowing that what little in there was false and any thoughtful evaluation on his part my evaporate my web of lies. "-that you hold more interest in serving Great Britain as one of her military officers than as her sportsmen?"

"Yes, sir." I answered promptly, with relief. Granted, it would probably be quite interesting to learn about the sports of the day and engage in competition of a safer and more healthy sort than what I was used to…but, well, I wasn't used to it. Too many life-threatening things had had a tendency these past few months to come my way for me to feel comfortable in frittering away my spare time here in learning to play games, albeit ones gussied up with years of tradition and prestige. "Not to mention I would be a positive _liability_ , should I attempt to hold up Green House's noble reputation on the field of sport, rather than that of combat, since I have played very little sport over the course of my life."

The Housemaster's mouth stretched in a somewhat artificial smile as he met my eyes, as if he didn't do it much, before he looked back down to his papers.

"That's all very well and good. In that case, I suppose we shall focus on a military education for you, the finest outside the army." he said with pompous pride, rummaging for more files in his desk before pulling them out and glancing over them as well. "Clausewitz, for one, since you already have a grounding in the Teutonic areas."

I made a vague affirmative noise as I tried to remember who that was. Hadn't he been a military genius or whatever from Prussia's country?

"So then, military strategy, tactics, the art of combat –you'll attend with the other students during Afternoon Break for fencing, and cricket as well, since it _is_ the sport of gentlemen-"

_Damn._

"-and study our methods of cavalry, the best weapon a modern army can boast." the Housemaster was finishing as my mind wandered off, and I winced, remembering the carnage caused in WWI when the _idiots_ in charge of the British military simply refused to see that cavalry was the absolute _worst_ thing to send out into an open field ringed by machine guns, and all the accompanying absolute horrors visited upon the undeserving men who had been conscripted to fight a war led by said utter morons.

 _Hell, most of the kids at Weston now will probably fight in the first war, at least, since they'd be below the maximum conscription age when it rolls around._

With that cheerful thought to accompany me, I was sent on my way with a file of papers telling me what my classes and studies would be and where they would be held, sandwiched between the sycophanting and pompous congratulation that seemed to be par for the course in a centuries-old school for British nobility. I read them as I trotted up the stairs to my dorm room, scanning over the gloss of superfluous words and noting with interest the real meat of my learning. It was almost too bad that I couldn't stay here to learn exclusively, but alas, I was here for an investigation and naught else.

_Not to mention most of the stuff they'll teach will be majorly out of date, comparatively speaking._

I set the papers to the side as I settled myself into the desk beside my small but elegant bed, sliding over the book with the signifier spell that (I hoped!) would solve most of my problems. Since this was study time, I figured I could make some decent headway with this spell…or at least, I could if I was careful, since I was in a place that now held people that could actually _understand_ the esoteric jibber-jabber in my magic books. Mey-rin probably didn't know which way to _hold_ a book with Greek in it –Bardroy was just as likely to read Latin as he was to fly– but here, it was part of the curriculum, and unless my three roommates had been _majorly_ slacking, they'd be able to bumble through the words _"Speak ye and summon the howling demons of the abyss"_ or whatever else might be on my page just by casually looking over my shoulder.

And there was really no explaining away arcane shit like that, even if most of my tomes discussed sigils rather than summons.

Thus, I only grunted and edged away my books when the other boys came in, keeping as much of the book shielded as I could with my body –a tricky proposition, considering I was wearing an illusion and, visually speaking, everything was placed just a _little_ bit wrong. I'd metaphorically cried uncle and allowed Sebastian near my face with some scissors (a nerve-wracking exhibition), so my hair actually _was_ cut short in a smooth, sleek hairstyle that hopefully wouldn't give me too much trouble, but my shoulders were pointier, so to speak, and it was hard to compute just how _not_ having breasts anymore changed my silhouette, especially at the sides, and how that worked with my narrower hips. Complicating everything was the fact that this changed silhouette was visual _only_ , and as such, I still _had_ a female body, which interacted with the real world in ways my illusion did not. I would have to be very careful with light sources and shadows and so on: there was a reason most magicians relied on multi-layered illusions if and when they had to disguise themselves, or better, shifted their forms at least temporarily.

Sucked to be me, but this was the quickest and easiest one to master, and I _did_ have priorities.

As night slowly fell, I _scratched_ a match from the pack I'd found in one of the desk drawers and lit the single taper stuck in a silver-chased candlestick to my right, the only pause in my rhythm of _read read read_ , scratch out a few words, study them intently, and then read a bit more. I'd already learned, almost the hard way (the less said of that the better, save that I was _never_ going to try that particular spell again, and one of the trees ringing my clearing had been blasted right off the face of the earth), that magicians here _loved_ to trip each other up, even in published books for each other's benefit, and as a consequence, frequently added pitfalls or deliberately skipped steps in copying out their rituals. The best way to check for and eliminate that chance was to reread everything until I had every word and syllable memorized, then comb through other books, published by someone entirely different, to see if the philosophy and methodology behind the first person's spell tallied up. If not, I had to drop everything and start from an entirely different spell-square one.

But so far, this one was looking promising. No glaring errors were popping up, and the logic behind the suggested framework was sound. Even if it did go _spectacularly_ wrong, the consequences were likely to be minimal, as in a middling-sized explosion that would serve to char the room and everything in it, but not me if I threw up a shield quick enough. (I didn't count my dormmates in that estimate, since I wasn't so _stupid_ as to practice any actual magic within even a dog's bark of them.)

And of course once I'd used it once or twice, I'd _know_ it worked, and be able to relax just a little as I continued using it.

" _So_ ," Charles said from where he was lounging on the other side of the room, chair tilted back at an angle that would get him a ruler to the back of the head had this place been supervised by nuns, his innocently casual tone immediately making me reach out and flip my notes closed, closing the latest of my reference books but keeping my finger inside for a bookmark. "-what are you working at so very hard the first day of your arrival? I mean, you haven't even been _assigned_ any work yet!"

"Perhaps he wishes to prepare himself for his first courses tomorrow." Victor said without looking up from his own, much-thicker book, and Charles scoffed, looking aside to his desk, then back across the room as he continued tossing his cricket ball from hand to hand.

"Just my luck to be stuck with yet another bluestocking." he complained, tilting his head back on his neck. _"Honestly_ , why don't you lot just go to Blue House and save us all the trouble?"

"The Headmaster assigned the students what houses he assigned them." George cut in, shrugging from his own corner, where he was repairing some sort of catcher's mitt.

"I also happen to like stabbing things as well as expanding my mind." I grunted without looking away from my books, shoulders hunched a little as I prepared for an attempt to take them away from me. Given as this was an excellent opportunity to steer the conversation both away from the subject of my books and/or their contents as well as nudge it towards a direction that'd help with our investigation, I continued with "And I suppose, technically, doesn't the Headmaster change houses sometimes? I heard a rumor about a guy –uh, Derrick Arden, right? He got switched from Red to Purple for some reason or another."

"Yes, but no one knows why." Victor answered, coming up for air from the dusty pages of his own book. "It was the Headmaster's decision."

"Headmaster's decision." agreed George.

"Headmaster's decision." groaned Charles.

And just like that, any critical thinking skills my three companions might possess almost audibly clicked off: who were they to question what that uncrowned king did with his keep and the people within? It was almost a Pavlovian conditioning, and briefly, I wondered if something of the sort was inadvertently or…advertently?...occurring.

_Does Undertaker know that kind of magic, I wonder? Is he using it? I mean, force of habit and tradition is one thing, but the way these guys just stop thinking at all when it comes to questioning the headmaster…no human's **that** infallible. Whatever, that's creepy food for another day's thought, I have to go to sleep soon, and I **don't** want to think of a kooky Grim Reaper planting ideas and memories in my head as I sleep._

Whatever. These guys didn't know, so my next course would be to gently poke other students and teachers for information I knew wouldn't be forthcoming.

Ah, the glamor and romance of meta-world investigation. How _utterly_ thrilling the next few days would be, interrogating stuffy young British noblemen and even stuffier teachers about things I already knew and they either didn't know themselves or would refuse to tell me if they did. Whoo-fucking-hoo.

_Welp, at least I can scratch "learning how to fence" off my wish list for this world. And it'll be a good way to cozy up to the other students, ease 'em off their guard about questions…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 10.49 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 10th, 2019, 11.15 AM USA Central Time


	50. That Butler, Digging

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, writing this chapter, thinking I really don't need to research all THAT much on how fencing works: You just whack at each other with really bendy swords and shout in French sometimes, right?
> 
> Fencing, a complicated Olympic sport with three styles and at least as many schools of thought and a very long, very diverse history: Bitch what? You thought fencing was simple? You insolent fool. You absolute coward.
> 
> Well, I did my best, with that and cricket, but if I got something wrong anyways, please let me know. I also don't know if I got things right with how fags are selected and all that within the upperclassmen.

_Arya's POV:_

The pre-bedtime scurry to the baths with all the other boys was about seven different layers of awkward, being as I was naked in a room full of naked males all splashing around in wooden tubs, but still paradoxically covered by a full-body illusion which gave me a different shape than was my wont, so _technically_ I wasn't really naked…

Well, it was still weird.

Thank god for bubbles: I hunkered down in my own tub, nose practically buried in the floating suds, and made strategic scrubbing noises whenever someone looked my way, but otherwise put every ounce of my being into not looking up, around, or anywhere else that might flash me some unwanted dick.

As consequence, I was last out, and had a mad scramble to dry myself off and put on the _ridiculously_ atmospheric nightshirt –seriously, with its high collar, loose cuffed sleeves, and trailing thigh-length hems, the white garment practically _vibrated_ "Victorian ghost story"– and much less-atmospheric soft trousers before the dreaded Lights Out order and the threatened punishment of a Y.

Granted, I wasn't overly concerned about such schoolyard penalties, since I could easily cheat a little bit and copy out the poem with magic, but getting called out for late-night shenanigans ran counter to my "avoid ever coming up in the thoughts of the other students, especially the ones that could get me kicked out" plans, and thus, I moved through the hallowed corridors with somewhat undue haste.

Once in the room –and closing the door very gingerly to avoid irritating my dormmates, all of whom were already bedding down– I padded across to my own bed, snuggling under the surprisingly comfy and fluffy covers. Curling up and closing my eyes, I put aside the lingering oddities of the cool air at the back of my neck where my long hair usually was, the unfamiliar textures of the bed and my clothes, and the faint hair-on-end shiver of the magic wreathing my body, instead focusing on lulling all my muscles into loose easiness and letting the subsequent relaxation pull me down into sleep.

_***Time Skip***_

"Turn _out!"_

I jerked and pulled my head up groggily from the soft feather pillow with a snort: to my surprise, as the people in the beds around me make equal drowsy shuffling noises, there was a familiar face holding the door open with his hand on the knob –Edward Midford, Lizzie's older brother, already dressed primly in a Weston school uniform, a sprig of holly in his buttonhole.

 _Ah, right. He's Greenhill's fag, and in this year, so he'd replace the room captain for this corridor and all rooms therein._ I thought with another yawn, lifting one of the elbows propping me up from the bed to cover my gaping jaw with one hand. Edward's eyes slid over me without any apparent recognition: aside from the change in hairstyle and gender, he _had_ only seen me like once, and then with far more pressing things on his mind, what with the Bizarre Dolls running amok on the ship and Lizzie being knocked out and so on. If he didn't recognize me now, I was safe for the rest of my stay here.

"Right sir, as you please, sir." I heard Charles mumble sardonically from his place across the room, rolling out of bed, and I pressed my hands to the headboard, arching and stretching my spine in a way that made it _pop_ gruesomely, before following his somewhat dubious example.

Getting redressed around the three other gentlemen was also an interesting experience: given as my, er, normal chest curved forwards rather a lot more than theirs did, I had to be careful that they didn't take note of just how _far out_ my hands moved while doing up the top buttons on my waistcoat and starched collared shirt, though doing up my trousers and tie and donning my morning coat was, comparatively, child's play…well, minus the tie.

I still had problems with the tie, stupid strangling neck-trap that it was.

Thankfully, the specifics of my illusion blurred the lines of my clothing once it was actually _on_ my body, reforming them to match my masculine appearance, so I wouldn't have to recast another spell on my school uniform and pajamas every time I changed them around. It was just the _process_ of putting them on that was the tricky bit, as the female-tailored clothes changed to male-tailored ones the more completely they were on my form and I had to be careful no one caught them in that weird middle stage of blurry visualization.

That'd be tricky to explain.

We joined the yawning, drowsy tide of other young men and boys that flowed down the stairs towards the ground floor and the Dining Hall. The mysterious ritual of "early morning tea" turned out to be a dozen pots ranged about the long wooden tables, cradled in warming censers and accompanied by the familiar teatime companions of cream, milk, and sugar, held in tiny metal pitchers and dispensers, along with trays of crumpets and pats of butter.

Nothing loathe, I took a cup and saucer from the serving line and thumped down with the other boys at the table benches, taking the warm teapot when it was handed to me and pouring myself a cup, passing it along again and waiting for the milk to come around, before adding a generous shot to my cup and reaching for a crumpet. These, too, were deliciously warm, and I flicked some butter across mine and ate it with gusto, knowing that there would be a long day ahead of me, full of strenuous exercise.

Sipping from the teacup also made an excellent excuse to hide my expression as I looked around the room, searching for oddities. Granted, the students who had vanished (and died, as I knew) all came from Red House and had been transferred to Purple House, so there would be next to no clues here in Green House, but I had no illusions about Ciel's displeasure if I sent him a note that amounted to in Green House to look into, didn't bother looking."

Such lax investigative methods might even warrant a reprimanding drop-in from Sebastian, which made me shiver all over, and not in the pleasant way. Dude was hot, and finally beginning to accept the fact that I wasn't secretly planning to stab him in the back and suck away his power at my first opportunity and _finally_ starting to actually _work_ with me, but that did not change the fact that Sebastian, by and large, was pure callous evil wrapped up in a pretty bishounen shell.

_Let's see…I know, obviously, that Greenhill is covering things up, but as me-the-person-who-has-no-meta-knowledge, it would probably be best to check up with Ciel on just where he stands in his investigations. Has he begun to suspect the prefects already? I don't really know how to convey that in a coded letter quite yet…so, for today, it'd be best to just learn my schedule and gently poke around when, where, and how I can, sound out the students here and whatnot. Then, tomorrow, depending on how far I get, I can either send a message to Ciel or pop by in some free time._

Pleased with my plans for the day, I nommed on my warm buttered crumpets and settled back to enjoy the heat and flavor bursting on my tongue.

_***Time Skip***_

To my chagrin, even the male British Victorians had to wear a hat whenever out of doors, though at least we could put them by when we entered a building. More specifically, put them on our desks, in the corner, as we opened our textbooks and laid out our papers and pens, getting ready to soak up the information being poured forth by our masters.

I listened with half an interested ear as the Green Housemaster rambled on about the logistics and methodology of war, taking the time between notes and pagethroughs of the text to look around at my other classmates. It was kinda disappointing to be in a classroom again: I hadn't been forced to regurgitate lectured information onto paper in a while now, and my spirit chafed against it as much as I ever had. Actually, this was just a little bit worse than normal schooling, despite the historical eyecandy: 19th-century warfare focused very much on strategies, weapons, and politics that didn't exist anymore, since colonialism was no longer blatantly allowed and encouraged worldwide and two World Wars had shattered the international and technological structure of Europe beyond recognition.

So the parts I wanted to take down –the bits about the philosophy of general war, of how if one went forth to wage war, one's goal should be to leave the enemy incapable of future or further retaliation and one should employ whatever methods necessary to ensure that– were "not suitable" for the lesson our teacher wanted to impart to us today, which irked me. The topics we went over did help me finally remember the specifics of the name Clauswitz, though: he'd been the Sun Tsu of Europe for a while around this time period, a Prussian military general who advocated for "total war" when nation fought against nation and whose philosophies had done a lot of damage in WWI. The problems with his theories was that they had been formulated back when wars were still strictly _professional_ exercises between soldiers who soldiered as a profession rather than out of patriotism or survival, and as such, did not mesh well when taken into action during the time period when wars were fought in such a way that actually _could_ ravage other countries completely and soldiers were conscripted from regular civilians instead of a volunteer force of ever-switching mercenaries.

_Bleh._

It was even more annoying that I couldn't _actually_ zone out, given that I was on super-ultra-best-behavior and all that and couldn't afford to draw the notice that would end in a reprimand, and since my classroom distraction skills were somewhat rusty what with almost a whole year's disuse, well…

An exceedingly boring hour-and-a-half passed, before at nine o'clock, the overhead bell tolled ominously, releasing us all back to our dorm for breakfast. This was a much bigger spread of eggs, sausages, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, tea, and toast on racks, and the various inhabitants dug in with almost obscene gusto, obviously stoking their engines for a long and trying day.

Or the food was just really good. I certainly thought so, and it was nice to eat something warm that I hadn't laboriously heated up myself over a kitchen grate, with the off chance of burning either myself or the food into the bargain.

One downside, though, was that some of the juices from the food soaked into the thin cotton bandages wrapped around my fingertips. I'd been checking them as I rewrapped each morning, and my nails were finally, _finally_ almost grown back over the beds, though I was going to have to wait a few weeks before undoing them for good.

Personally speaking, I couldn't _wait_ to have the full use of my hands again, unhampered by that thin layer of fabric that made all my tasks just that _tiny_ bit harder. _Fuck_ Oliver and his stupid long-mutilation torture methods.

I spent most of the rest of breakfast and Fag Time explaining my presence here to the curious Weston students, sprinkling in gentle and hopefully subtle questions about transferring students between houses and how, exactly, that might have gone down. After all, people would start to notice if I began or ended every conversation with _"Where's Derrick Arden & Associates?"_ and blatantly used said conversations as a vector to grab at even more information about the same. Slow and steady wins the race and all that, and even if I was sneaky about it, people would still talk to themselves and notice my perhaps _abnormal_ focus on certain students changing certain houses for certain reasons in every single conversation I started up with another person.

After Fag Time, however, I was destined to follow a smaller stream of the students towards a different section of the building, most of them in the older years and not the first forms. There was about a dozen of us all told, and we piled into a long, brightly-lit room with smooth, shiny wooden floors bare of even the smallest scrap of carpeting, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors lining one wall and leaded windows looking out over the grounds on the other. Rounded stands with rapier swords thrust through them, and the excited chatter of the other boys as they hung their hats on pegs and put their effects in a shelf of cubbyholes evidently designed for just that purpose, told me that this was likely a fencing room, and I swallowed a little. It wasn't that I wasn't as excited as all get-out to learn how to swing a blade (what self-respecting nerd wouldn't be?) it was more the fact that, well…I didn't know how, and these boys had all clearly been practicing at it for several years or longer.

I was probably gonna get my ass kicked.

With a quick change of clothes into the starchy white, rigidly-ironed thick quilted cotton of our practice uniforms, I joined the others in the line as our fencing master –a middle-aged gentleman with a single thin scar marring his face, otherwise unremarkable in face and form– nodded to the lot of us.

"I have been told we have a new student joining us today?" he asked with a raised brow, and I inhaled, before clicking my heels together a little and straightening, not really able to salute due to the fencing mask I had cradled at my side.

"Here, sir."

The back of my neck prickled as I felt the curious gazes of the other boys resting on me, the weight of their eyes almost tangible despite the fact none had broken our impromptu (or not) formation. The fencing master nodded to me, stroking his wispy-bearded chin meditatively.

"What is your experience with classical fencing?"

I swallowed a little. "Uh –not much in fencing, specifically, though I was taught to handle the standard Teutonic longsword, and I know the care and maintenance of blades."

Damn right I did. Whenever Prussia had roped me into practicing swordplay with him (which always ended in him chasing me around the room with one of his old knight swords, cackling like a madman) he'd been absolutely fanatical in making sure I cleaned, polished, and sometimes even honed the edge of the blade afterwards, which I put down as his desire for perfection and neatness in his personal effects, an obsession shared by his brother Germany.

My chore-related war flashback interrupted itself as I was jolted back into focus on the current situation, noticing the fencing master move again as he waved at the other students.

"Continue from where we left off yesterday, if you would. I will partner with this gentleman for the duration of the period and instruct him personally."

Thus given the order to dissolve, the rest of the class bowed shortly, once, before drifting away in pairs to snatch up their swords and begin limbering up.

"There are three blades associated with the noble art of fencing." The instructor began promptly, drawing me over to a stand that looked slightly shinier and better than the ones the rest of the students had congregated around. He pulled a blade from it, showing me a long, thin, almost whippy sword with a small round disk serving as the handguard. "This is the foil, which may be used only to target the torso, not the arm or legs, and touches are scored only by the use of the tip. Only a single touch may be counted to either fencer at the end of a phase: if two touches land simultaneously, the referee may use the right of way judging."

He slotted the sword back into the stand and picked up another, slightly bulkier one, with a bigger guard. "The épée is a thrusting sword, heavier than the foil, but still under 800 grams. With the épée, the entire body is a valid target, hence the more protective pommel. There are no off-target touches with épée fencing, except the ground, and the referee does not use right of way for consecutive touches, awarding simultaneous points to both opponents, excepting that it is the last match point and they are tied for victory, in which case both hits are null."

Replacing that sword as well, he took out yet another one, lighter than the épée but with a bigger guard than the foil. "Lastly, we have the sabre, which is both a cutting and a thrusting weapon that may target any area above the waist, except for the hands. Unlike with the épée and foil, off-target touches do not stop the action, and the match will continue until one of the fencers lands a scoring touch. Sabre fencing is the quickest and most aggressive, while épée is suited more towards defense, and foil is the best beginning. Which would you prefer to start with?"

It took me all of perhaps three seconds to come to _that_ decision. Maybe it would've been a better idea to start small, but by god with all the things that came hurtling at me aggressively, it would be _really nice_ to learn how to hurl some aggression of my own right back.

"Sabre, please." I answered.

The fencing master nodded, drawing the sabre out of the rack once again and handing it to me, before quickly stepping off and grabbing another sabre from a different rack, before walking back and switching ours out. I noticed that, being as I was slightly taller than he was, mine was slightly longer.

"Now then," the man began as he guided me towards a clear space. "To begin a match, the fencers _must_ salute each other –failure to do so can result in suspension or even disqualification. The most common salute is like so."

Carefully, making sure I could see every movement clearly, he straightened his shoulders, facing me directly, and lifted his sword until it was vertical before his face, guard just under his chin, then solemnly lowered it again. Tentatively, I mimicked him, gaining a wordless nod of approval.

"Following the fencers' salute, we must then salute the referee and panel of four judges, facing each in turn. As there are none here, we shall simply pretend."

Thus doing so, I followed him and carefully saluted five empty spaces in the air beside us.

"Now," the fencing master said as we turned back to each other. "-the referee, which shall be me for the duration of our match, would call _'En garde!'_ which is a cue for donning our masks and taking the en garde position in preparation to begin the match. Firstly, the heels come together in an L shape, your primary foot extended forward, legs straight."

It took me a moment to pull on the fencing mask, and when I blinked through the mesh, I saw that he'd already taken that position, which I then copied faithfully.

"Very good. Now, extend your primary foot one step forward, so that there is a shoulders'-width of space between your feet."

I did so.

"Bend your knees only slightly, to such an extent that your center of balance falls directly between your two feet. Extend your fencing arm forward, so that the elbow is one palm's-width away from your torso, sweeping your other arm back to hold for balance and balance your front arm. Your front shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip and knee should all fall in a straight vertical line."

With some careful maneuvering and mental judging of space, I did so.

"Your back sole should always be on the ground, even when lunging. As we educate our gentlemen on the premise that they may one day use these skills to bring a duel to a successful conclusion-"

_Holy shit they still do that now?_

"-we encourage our students to use conservative footwork, moving on heels and flat feet rather than on the ball of one's feet, and to always keep one's arm out for balance, as not every surface will be as forgiving and stable as a dueling hall's. A fencer who falls is a fencer who may be killed due to his incompetence."

The fencing master eyed me sternly as he raised his blade a little, obviously nearing an important point in his lecture. "The entire point and purpose of fencing is to hit without being hit: if you have been struck, you have done something wrong as a fencer, even if you win the bout. Fencing strategy is typically defensive, in that any attack which does not account for your physical defense, any attack which leaves you exposed in some way, should be avoided at all costs. We aim for maximum efficiency of movement, with tight, small actions that take into account both timing and distance. The purpose of bladework is to directly control the opponent's weapon, minimizing the chance that it might strike you while you are attempting to hit your enemy. Understand?"

I frantically ran back what he said, making sure it was firm in my memory, and then nodded.

"Excellent. Following the order for _en garde_ , the referee will then ask if both duelists are ready. _Prêts?"_

 _As I'll ever be._ I thought to myself, drawing in a slow breath and trying not to wince as I did. Miss Nina had done her best, but this still was, well, a _male_ garment, and while I didn't have anything near the rocking chest of, say, Ukraine, I still had breasts and therefore my lungs were somewhat squashed in this uniform. Tactically, this was a disadvantage, since it would mean I was shorter of breath and therefore less able to run for endurance, which in turn meant that, as far as I knew in fencing, I was much more likely to lose.

_Well, it wasn't as if I'd be able to do anything to get myself in the win column anyways, at least not at first._

"Ready." I said.

"The referee would then announce the commencement of the match with the statement _'Allez!'_ Upon this, as we are using fencing sabers, we would then each attempt to score a point on the other person by either the edge or the tip of the blade striking anywhere above the waist, excluding the hands. I shall merely see how you measure up during our first phrase, after which we shall start your instruction in truth. If at any point you immediately require a halt, please tap your hindmost foot against the floor twice, or wave your back hand."

I swallowed, then nodded, my eyes desperately darting over the instructor's form, noting even with my complete lack of fencing knowledge that he seemed perfectly poised and all too ready to counter anything I might try.

_"Allez!"_

Immediately I flicked my blade sidelong at his shoulder, figuring that since sabre work was apparently all about speed, and the best defense was a good offense, that was probably a good option for attack.

With an insultingly negligible twitch of his blade, the fencing master _swatted_ my blade off course and swept his in low, aiming for my stomach as I lunged back, my mind scrambling to keep myself in the proper pose while still peering through the rather thick mesh and avoiding the gleaming sweep of his sword.

_***Time Skip***_

By the end of the fencing hour, I was absolutely dripping with sweat, panting hard as though I'd run several miles without warm-ups. I'd never thought about it before, but of course, the utterly balanced, stiffened poses of fencing put a lot of stress on one's muscles and body.

Try to crouch, bending your knees just a little, and just _hold_ it. How long can you hold that pose without it beginning to hurt, beginning to burn, and your whole body is screaming at you to straighten up like a normal human being? The answer, even if like me you were in decent physical shape and used to exercise, is _not very fucking long_ , and it was made even worse by the constant need to shuffle back and forth, weaving in and out of sabre range, and move my arm in a hundred different directions, trying to ward off blows in the same neat, economical, almost effortless way the instructor did, while still also keeping my other arm extended for balance.

No wonder all the fencers in movies had some killer legs. I was _definitely_ adding this to the roster of my morning exercises, or at least, I would if I had the opportunity when I got back to the manor.

I'd learned about poses, about footwork, and a complicated array of parries and ripostes, about the rules of proper fencing duels (which, quite frankly, I didn't pay nearly as much attention to, since it wasn't likely that I would ever enter into such an arrangement) and the etiquette of accepting or instigating a duel, and my head was absolutely stuffed as I changed with the others and dabbed off the sweat with a damp towel, then dared to deviate from schedule enough for an impromptu stroll across the grounds.

Since it was 2.00, and thus time for the afternoon break, I was going off my experiences yesterday to find "Housemaster Michaelis" in his office in Blue House right now, and the other students more or less completely distracted by the offering of tea. (Nearly five hours of fencing practice meant that the gaping hole in my stomach was very much enthused of that idea, but I had a mission here.)

Not hampered by a dress for the first time in five months, which was an odd sort of feeling, it was the work of a relatively quick moment to hike myself up over the wrought-iron fence near the back of the dorm house, being careful to avoid the decorative but still uncomfortably pointy arrowhead spikes on the top as I threw a leg over the edge. This kind of schoolyard infiltration was oddly fun, and I grinned as I gripped the top of the spikes beneath the flare, draping myself over the other side and sliding my feet down the slick iron a little before I let go and leaped away wholesale, landing with a _thump_ and a slight puff of dust twelve feet down on the dorm side of the fence.

 _I feel so dorky._ I thought as I wound my way across the lawn with a small grin, sticking close to the sparse cover of trees and shrubs, loosening my tie a little before carefully taking it off and sticking it in my pocket. After all, the only real way to tell Weston students apart was the tie and the emblem stitched on our lapel, and while I couldn't take off the embroidered crest without a fair amount of effort or slinging off the jacket in an outrageous display of slovenliness, I could make it harder for Blue House students to identify me as an out-of-house student at a distance.

The inherent fun in this particular trip, I decided before I had gotten too far towards Sebastian's office, was the fact that even if I got caught, I was due for nothing worse than a tongue-lashing and a putative write-up of Latin. No fatal or even painful consequences, just good old-fashioned sneaking around at a gorgeous school, and the fact that this was a British private college and I was all dressed up in period clothing, going to deliver a secret message was just the icing on the cake at this point. I felt so…Double-O-Seven-y. But in a good way. Like, kid-in-clubhouse way.

I giggled to myself as I flattened against the wall of the dorms, mentally humming the _Mission Impossible_ theme.

A quick peek around to make sure no one had me in their sights, and I relaxed a little, before shifting my position to lean casually against the wall, so that only if someone looked close and saw the green lion, rather than the blue owl, crest embroidered on my lapel they would be able to tell I wasn't from this house.

I lifted my finger, drawing in a small spark of magic, a tiny twinkling mote of light that danced upon my fingertip. I wanted to be subtle about this, because Undertaker, and even if I hadn't been, it wasn't as if this particular bit of magic needed a lot of power.

 _"Find Sebastian."_ I whispered, and flicked it off, watching as the tiny seed of glowing light rushed upwards in a wide arc and became invisible in the bright sunlight, waiting patiently. A few moments later, there was a sort of subtle tug at my attention, and I turned around, looking up at the broad face of the dormitory, before following the tug off to my left. Thanks to the small speck of magic, I knew Sebastian was in an office on the far right of the building, in the same way that I had known the shutters of the building itself were made of wood as soon as I had looked up. It was information my senses had recorded, though they had been helped along rather greatly by the little mote of magic I'd sent to seek the demonic butler out.

I hadn't done the mundane thing –just walk into the building and start asking– to suss him out, because firstly I was pretty sure the Blue House students wouldn't answer me as soon as they got a good look at my emblem, and secondly, this was quicker, and I deserved to be lazy after five exhausting hours of learning how to swing a glorified metal wand around.

Further glorifying the ideals of laziness, as soon as I had walked around to where his office was, I picked up a rock and threw it at the window.

 _Tak._

No response as the pebble landed somewhere to my left.

I fished in the grass at my feet and picked up a whole handful, plucking two out –easier to control the trajectory with only a few of them– and launching them up at the window again.

_Ta-tak._

Still nothing.

"…c'mon, I know you can hear me, you hellfire-wreathed bastard." I muttered under my breath, picking out a slightly larger pebble and cocking my throwing arm back. "Open up!"

_Tak!_

The corner of my eye twitched when that again elicited no response, and I was just about to throw the whole handful up when the window creaked open and Sebastian leaned out, looking distinctly unimpressed.

"Anything _urgent_ to report?" he asked with a somewhat icy narrowing of his eyes, and I dropped my pebbles, dusting off my hands.

"I need to talk to you and your boss." I answered back, craning my neck a little, since he was on the third floor. "Can you beam me up, Scotty?"

A wordless lift of his brow told me Sebastian's opinion on references he wouldn't be able to get for another hundred years, before there was an odd, harsh rustling, like raven wings, and the flap of his long Housemaster's robe, and the world was wreathed in darkness. I came out on the other side of that, blinking, in presumably the same room Sebastian had been standing in, with a carelessly-sprawled Ciel inspecting what I recognized as Latin homework in an armchair by the fire.

"Yes, Thompson?" he asked, and I tried –and failed– to judge how far along he was in the plot by eye.

I inhaled deeply and gathered my thoughts, stiffening my shoulders to stand primly upright, like a soldier reporting for duty. "So, I get how you want me to investigate those disappeared students, _and I am-"_ Nervous glance at Sebastian. "-but, like…how? I mean, I'm poking around at the Green House, asking questions, but I don't know how many questions I can ask before people get suspicious if _you're_ asking them too, and I wasn't sure how to send that in a coded letter, so…"

I trailed off. The unimpressed look Ciel was leveling at me was not doing any favors for my ego. Hey, I was doing my best! It wasn't _my_ fault that the most I'd ever done in terms of espionage was trail after a bunch of vastly-more-experienced superhumans who told me what to do along every step of the way!

Ciel sighed and tossed the papers onto a side table, leaning his head against the back of the chair and frowning at me.

"I have been fielding tentative inquires of my own." he said, his frown growing deeper, as if etched into his face by bad memories. "Evidently, the students at Weston engage in very petty rivalries between the separate houses, and speaking of other students is a rapid route towards isolating oneself."

 _Okay, so he's already had a chat with, uh, that freckled kid. Maximillian? Macmillian?_

"Yeah…" I rubbed the back of my head. "I ran into some of that. Thankfully, the guys at Green House seem to take any disagreement as a chance to practice their, uh, physical pursuits. I think they forgot after I proved I wasn't a traitor or whatever via arm-wrestling, though."

It'd been the first arm-wrestling contest I'd ever won, actually, which was a certain feather in my metaphorical cap.

"Have you made contact with your house prefect and his fag?" Ciel asked, and I blinked.

"Uh –if "made contact with" counts as passing them in the hallways and stuff, and Greenhill showed me around on my first day…kinda?"

I tried a tentative smile, which did not seem to endear me to my pouting boss at all.

"I have begun to curry favor with the Blue House's prefect's fag, Clayton." he said after a roll of his eyes, sinking into the plush chair a little and pressing his fingertips together in the pose of a plotting villain in melodrama. "Prefects and their fags are allowed to attend a Midnight Tea Party with the Headmaster, and as he seems to be our sole lead-"

_Soul, hehe, 'cause its Undertaker._

"-in the disappearances of Derrick Arden and his fellows, it seems as if our best bet would be to angle to get ourselves _entré_ to that elite circle. I want you to cozen Herman Greenhill and his fag: obviously, we cannot replace them so late in the game, but we can worm our way into the P4's regards nonetheless."

One of my eyebrows twitched as my expression went flat. "Uh, I hope you're not hoping that I honeytrap the guy. I mean, he's cute and all that, but…no."

Ciel's own eyebrows furrowed. "Honeytrap?" he asked in puzzlement.

Sebastian leaned over Ciel's shoulder and began to whisper in his ear. I watched in resigned amusement as the earl's face slowly turned redder and redder, until he was molten-faced and gasping for air.

 _"There will be no need for that kind of cozening!"_ he all but shrieked, and I shared an oddly congenial smirk with Sebastian as he straightened up.

"Yeah, that's what I said." I shrugged, indicating myself with a slight gesture. "I mean, I don't exactly look suitable for it right now-"

_Unless Greenhill's into other guys._

"-and aside from any personal preferences on the matter, I've never done that sort of thing before, and I'm _pretty sure_ honeytrapping requires a lot of experience."

Sebastian rolled one of his shoulders in a careless shrug as Ciel continued to sputter, still smirking a little. "Well, I suppose if such a thing became truly needful, I could provide the 'honeytrap'." he said with amusement. "I have _ample_ amounts of the necessary experience, after all, and my form is merely subject to the will of my master." He looked at Ciel with glinting eyes as his subtle smirk became almost toothy. "Should my lord command it, I could easily become the sort of creature such boys would grovel to tell their secrets to."

 _"Snrk."_ I clamped my lips together and bit down on them for good measure, because if the way the flustered Ciel was glaring at us both was any indication, it was probably not a very good idea to encourage Sebastian right now. No matter how funny the idea was.

_'Housemistress Michaelis will now give you boys a **special** lesson'…pfthahahaha that's so dumb. Is there fanfiction of that? I bet there's fanfiction of that. I mean, it wouldn't **work** , since even as a demon he'd probably get thrown out of the school for daring to be female and on the grounds, but like…stupid teacher porno tropes with Sebastian. I mean he already seduced Beast to get info, so it's really not much of a stretch…and didn't he have a riding crop on one of the manga covers during the Weston arc, the one with him in his teacher rig with the cross and everything?_

_Oh my god Sebastian's gonna fuck someone for info. Again._

I figured it was best to move this conversation along before I started laughing for real. Ciel probably wouldn't appreciate the continued teasing at his expense, even though this was the closest thing to bonding I'd ever had with Sebastian.

_Well, that and beating the tar out of the same Grim Reaper. But it wasn't simultaneous, and I kinda lost my fight –or at least I didn't beat him conclusively myself– so maybe not so much a bonding experience._

"Uh, _anyway,"_ I cleared my throat loudly, shaking myself into a more businesslike frame of mind. "-is your, uh, work with the Blue House prefect and his fag showing any results yet?"

What I meant by this was, of course, and _'Have you begun your counter-plot?'_

"Clayton has begun to rely on me." Ciel said smugly as Sebastian's smug expression dropped a little, becoming a tad pale. "By having Sebastian execute his chores, I am drawing attention as a model of efficiency and good work, which shall soon result in Clayton choosing me as his fag –unless something were to go wrong, of course."

He leveled a stern glance at me, and I held up my hands defensively. "Hey man, don't look at me. And don't _you_ look at me either-" This aimed at Sebastian. "-because technically I'm old enough to _have_ a fag, not _be_ a fag, so I'm not gonna be asking you to do anything for me."

Perhaps it was my imagination, but the color returned to Sebastian's pale face somewhat.

"In that case, as the young master is focused on currying favor with the prefect's circle in Blue House, it may be unwise to too tangibly work on similar efforts within Green House." he suggested to me, tilting his head a little as his narrow professor's glasses flashed a little in the sunlight. A smirk played about his lips. "As you are rather inexperienced in the matters of espionage."

"Oh _fuck you."_

Sebastian shrugged carelessly, closing his eyes as his smirk grew a little. "You said you were fielding inquiries –have you made any progress?" he asked, opening them again and raising a brow.

"So far the students I've asked, some of which were roommates of the ones on the list you gave me in the uh, mission dossier-" And hadn't _that_ been an interesting read, with all the lists and names and lineages. "-have all said the transfer was from my house to Purple House, and that it was the headmaster's decision, and that there was no point in inquiring beyond that. I haven't asked any of the prefects or their fags yet. Greenhill's fag's in my fencing class, though, I can put the lean on him sometime tomorrow maybe."

Ciel looked at me as though he expected to be disappointed. "Being as you are also a magician, can't you do anything to suss out the location from the headmaster or his office, perhaps?" he asked icily.

I began to sweat under my starchy collar. The problem was, I technically _could_ , except that I knew that the headmaster was really Undertaker, and that was about sixty shades of _no way not happening_. There were only a certain number of outcomes that came with snooping around _Undertaker's_ office, as opposed to some pompous British professor's, and of them all, remaining completely undetected was unlikeliest on the list, closely followed by the option involving porn. The likeliest options, of course, were dismemberment, death, and dissolution, not particularly in that order, with a strong chance of something nasty happening in regards to Undertaker's experiments on raising the dead thrown into the mix.

The even bigger problem was, of course, that I couldn't _tell_ any of this to Ciel and Sebastian, because that would raise the question of how I knew, and why I hadn't told them before, and so on and so forth and other options that I would _really rather do almost anything else to avoid._

So I flung every ounce of my impromptu lying experience into my next few words.

"Well, I _could_ ," I began, scratching awkwardly at my cheek. "But, like…I dunno if that's really a good idea. I mean, a lot seems sketchy about this scenario, and it isn't impossible for another magician to be responsible, somehow, and if that's the case, I _really_ don't want to tip them off that there's a fellow magic-worker around. Surprise is just about the only advantage I've _got_ when it comes to magical combat."

Evidently the temptation for Sebastian to smack-talk me once more was too strong for the demon to resist.

"Indeed." he hummed, hooding his eyes. "The aura of sorcery that hangs about you is quite negligibly faint, as befitting an inexperienced apprentice, but it _is_ distinct, and has only strengthened over the duration of your stay at our estate. Another magician would undoubtably be able to detect it, should you share proximity with them for whatever reason."

I deadpanned at him. "Do you enjoy this? Talking shit about me? Does your casual animosity go that far?"

"I enjoy watching you squirm, Miss Thompson." Sebastian replied primly, with his deceptively angelic smile. I rolled my eyes.

"Anyways, I continued. "-if that's the case, then I should probably focus on schmoozing with Greenhill and his fag, but, uh, gently, you know? Stuff that I can totally withdraw if either of us start attracting suspicion. Sebastian can pass our, uh, "mail" back and forth, since I really don't want to have to use magic unless I have to, and I guess if something really urgent comes up, we can meet?"

"The chapel is neutral enough territory." Ciel hummed, tapping a few of his fingers together restlessly. "Should such a situation arise, I'm _sure_ you can manage to get yourself out of the dorms after lights-out in time for a meeting there. Should either of us desire such a face-to-face meeting, we shall attach a line in our missive to the effect of…" He paused, and seemed to sink into thought for a moment. "Ah yes. The line _'Father wishes to send his greetings.'_ or some variant thereof shall do nicely, I suppose. Include that if you wish to meet in the chapel after lights-out on the same day your letter is sent."

I nodded a few times, pursing my lips as I set those words into my memory. Since we were theoretically correspondents, that was a line we could include multiple times without suspicion arising, which was all to the good. Not that I thought anyone would intercept, but, well…just in case. Better safe than sorry and all that.

The bell in the Blue House suddenly rang, making me jump.

_Oh shit._

"Uh, I gotta get back to Green House." I said hastily as Ciel rose to his feet nearly as fast, nodding and waving me off.

"Remember to be _subtle_ in your inquires, Thompson." was all he said in farewell, and I dared to flip a bird at him as I slung a leg over the edge of the windowsill. Since neither he nor Sebastian pushed me out for my insubordination, I figured I was safe enough, and began a hasty scale downwards, breathing a quiet sigh of relief in that I was finally unhampered by skirts, because even in tailored pants, this descent down a brick wall with only a few stray ivy vines and chipped bits of mortar was somewhat tricky.

_***Time Skip***_

I barely made it to the cricket pitch in time for the second, smaller bell, and for a few seconds just bent over myself, hands on my knees, as I gasped for air. _Fuck_ these people and their stupid weird rules about not walking on a perfectly durable lawn, and fuck me for being lazy and choosing the easiest option for mind-manipulation and memory alteration that left me with little to no space in terms of mental bargaining.

Then again, this would become easier with time, as the students and teachers at Weston became more used to my presence and began seeing me as more of a fixture, which would cause the magic to meld more closely with their perception of reality, but until then, I had to be annoyingly angelic.

"Thompson?"

I blinked and looked up, swallowing a little around my dry throat, to see Greenhill walking towards me, one heavy eyebrow raised.

"Why aren't you in uniform?" he asked, and my eyes ran him up and down, noticing that he was wearing the starchy white sports uniform that Miss Nina had tailored for me that was a deviation from the usual Weston uniform.

"Uh, I was, um, doing stuff." I dissembled vaguely, attempting a sheepish smile. "Only just got to the pitch. And I, um…" My eyes slid sideways as I flushed a little more than I already was, overheated from my frantic running towards the sports stadium. "…don't really know how to play cricket."

The whole saying might go _"The way to a man's heart is through his stomach,"_ but I was willing to bank on my own recent bastardization of that, _"The way to an athlete's heart is through his sport."_ I wasn't really _good_ at the idea of cozening, not unless I was already friends with someone, and so far I hadn't exactly created stirring bonds of any kind with my fellow Weston students. It was Greenhill's job, as the Green House prefect, to take care of his fellow students, which was probably why he had come over to begin with, since most athletes wouldn't take the position I was in unless they were painfully exhausted. As such, technically it was his responsibility to induct me into the dubiously fine world of English sports, and I could use his instructing as a vector to draw out information.

It was certainly the best way to weasel my way into the prefect's circle that _I_ could think of.

"So uh, I know you're busy as the prefect or whatever, but I…" I mumbled as I straightened up, tucking an abnormally-shortened lock of my hair behind my ear. "Do you think you could teach me the ropes?"

I was about to bat my eyes at him, but then I realized that in 19th-century England, and as a male, that might telegraph an entirely different intention than what I wanted. Unless he was actually into other guys like that…

 _You know, this is an all-boy's school where the students are, by and large, mostly unsupervised and completely cut off from all females from the beginning of puberty to near-adulthood. I refuse to believe that there hasn't been at least **some** gay shit going down in corners somewhere._

So I was left to sort-of-awkwardly project an aura of vulnerability that would _hopefully_ induce the other blond to help me out, balancing the fine line of "oh won't you please help me" and "I'm a pretty damsel in distress" that would not work at _all_ when I was looking like a guy. Given as Greenhill was a Victorian gentleman, he had been trained by his society to view women as vulnerable, fragile creatures in need of protection, and I was trying to tap into a similar sort of instinct, that to protect and aid a fellow (slightly younger) student, without going too far and acting like a suspiciously effeminate boy angling for some equally-illicit close bonding. It was surprisingly tricky.

But his expression cleared, and I was left to exhale in relief behind his back as he turned around, gesturing me towards the locker… _building_ , and the cricket pitch.

"In that case, you should probably get changed before we start. Cricket as the Green House plays it is no sport for school clothing!" he laughed, and I obediently chimed in, plastering a hopefully-genuine-looking smile on my face as I did.

A short interlude to gear up later, and I was following Greenhill out onto the crowded cricket field, the bulky cricket bat slung somewhat awkwardly over my shoulder.

"The purpose of cricket is to knock over the opposing team's wickets. There are eleven players on each team, though usually the actual number on the pitch is much smaller." the bulkier blond began without preamble, pointing with his own bat towards the three rickety sticks upholding the two weird little rattles at both ends of the packed-down earth. "Each team guards their own wicket with a batsman at either end, with the fielding bowler standing on the immediate left of the defending batsman and wicket. There is a wicket-keeper from the fielding team behind the defending batter, who swings to defend his wicket. Once a ball has been hit, the two batsmen must run to the opposite creases to score: the four painted lines are the creases, representing in turn the bowling crease, popping crease, and two return creases. The wicket is aligned on the bowling crease, the popping crease four feet in front of it. Although the popping crease only extends a few meters to either side, its parameter crosses the entire field. The return creases are drawn at a severe right angle to the popping crease and intersect with the bowling crease, and they are similarly unlimited in length."

I nodded, looking at the white lines chalked boldly against the ground.

"As for batting, if the ball touches or crosses the boundary line after bouncing once, it is counted as four runs. If it passes over the boundary without bouncing, it is a six, the highest single batting score possible in cricket. However, if the ball is caught before it bounces on the ground, the batter is out on the spot, much in the same way he is if the wicket he guards is put down, which is referred to as being bowled. Furthermore, if the batsman's wicket is put down before he returns to his crease, he is also out."

 _So **that's** how its like baseball._ I thought, nodding ruminatively to myself as I pursed my lips. I had wondered at the connection in the manga: my grasp of sports wasn't good enough for me to puzzle out the rules from the panels Yana Toboso had so thoughtfully included, but combining those with the other Green House members running around and acting it out in front of me, everything was finally starting to come together.

"When a bowler has bowled six times, another bowler takes over. This is known as an over. On the other hand, a batsman can continue hitting until he is out. One inning equals ten outs, or dismissals, and then the batting and fielding teams switch. Unlike your American sport of baseball, one inning takes a long time to play. In traditional cricket, a match consists of about two innings each and takes about five days to finish."

"Holy shit." I mumbled under my breath, and then quickly flashed Greenhill an angelic smile when he blinked and turned to squint at me in confusion. A little uncertain, he slowly shrugged and turned back, continuing to point for my edification.

"Generally for Weston cricket matches, we invoke a special rule that allows innings to end not only by the number of outs but by the number of bowls as well. Our matches go two innings, with each inning restricted to twenty total overs, so the teams change sides after ten overs, or sixty bowls. There are also intervals for teatime every two hours, given as cricket is a demanding sport that takes so long to play."

"Sounds sweet." I said, swinging my bat off my shoulder. "So what, do you guys practice all the time on the same pitch? All the houses together, I mean?"

Greenhill frowned a little, oddly enough, before waving me over to a more empty patch of grass.

"Generally, no, we do not." he said stiffly. "Such joint practices would only invite spying on each other's strategies, and inter-house competition would become more difficult than ever. Violet Wolf and Sapphire Owl houses have their own, smaller fields in which to practice. In what context do you mean _guys?"_

I blinked twice, then shrugged in dismissive confusion as I mimicked Greenhill in taking up a defensive pose, bat and all. "Uh, like men? Boys? You know, its American slang for a group of males."

"I see." Greenhill relaxed a little and offered me a compassionate smile. "In England, you should know, _to make a Guy of oneself_ means to make a fool of oneself, so I would avoid using that particular slang unless you are around peers you trust."

I stared at him and barely stopped the words _"You're shitting me"_ from escaping my mouth, instead choosing to not give my stiffly upright prefect a heart attack with the much-tamer "Seriously!? Like that one Guy Fawkes dude you blow up every November or whatever?"

Greenhill huffed in amusement and pulled a small, hard little leather ball from his pocket. "Exactly like." He pulled his arm back and gave me an encouraging smile. "Let's just see how you bat before trying for team playing. Ready?"

I looked down at the paddle-like bat in my hands, then back up at him.

"I think I'm ready to give it a swing." I said with a grin and a wink, making Greenhill laugh.

_And score another one in the 'worming my way into prefect's regard' column. I thought smugly._

To my surprise, it actually wasn't that hard to pick up cricket. I may have been no kind of athlete in terms of devotion and interest, but my reflexes were good, and all the practice I'd done with my Colt and my daily morning exercises had given me strong wrists and stronger arms, and I could run well, which was evidently more than half the battle. It wasn't long before Greenhill and I moved back towards some of the other players, and we began switching around who was at bat and who bowled, who caught and who defended our largely-metaphorical wickets, since the actual pitch was claimed by some very aggressive players that I _thought_ I vaguely recognized as some of the members on the Green Lion cricket team from the manga.

Encouraging shouts and grunts of effort rang across the field, and despite the light sheen of perspiration starting to coat my face, I was actually grinning and starting to have fun as I whacked the ball and ran, or raced across the field to catch it with the others. As previously stated, playing around instead of teetering on the not-so-metaphorical edge of death was… _fun_ , the more so because I could actually enjoy this game free of any sort of stress whatsoever. Just by running around and having fun with these exuberant other students, I was enacting my mission of getting close to Greenhill, which was encouragingly displayed by the camaraderie-filled grins he occasionally sent my way. He did the same with the other students, of course, shouting encouragement and advice and often demonstrating a better way to execute a move, but the important part was that I was giving him a positive impression, which meant that I'd be able to ask him questions easier, and have less suspicion cast upon me.

"Man, I see why baths are at the end of the day." I groaned as I unbuttoned my no-longer-quite-as-starchy white top with the other boys, feeling sweaty all over for the second time in less than six hours. Thankfully cricket didn't require quite so much razor-sharp reflexes and instantaneous strategizing as sabre fencing, but all that running around and slugging with the bat was _still_ exhausting.

"For a beginner, you're not half bad at cricket, Ryan!" one of the other boys laughed from my right side, slapping me on the back as I rocked forward a little, then offered a slightly nervous smile in return.

"I feel as though I should remind you that referring to each other by first names is forbidden." Greenhill said carefully from the depths of his own shirt, which was half over his head. That seemed to be the only reprimand forthcoming, however, and I got the feeling that he did so only to avoid the chance of having to scold us for real in the future, since all the boys around me smirked and rolled their eyes, or nudged each other a little.

To my slight embarrassment, here in the changing room of the locker building I was also discovering a second shortcoming of being a student at an all-boy dormitory full of macho males who were all, in their own various ways, obsessed with physical fitness: I was surrounded by hot shirtless (and occasionally trousers-less) guys.

Sue me, I was a woman (well, a female at least) with warm blood in her veins, and there were muscles and bare skin on my every side as I hastily changed into my normal school uniform. It was a hard fight to keep from occasionally letting my eyes linger, and an even harder one to keep from blushing. (As it was, I didn't think I did too good of a job on the second option.)

But finally, I was out of there, all but propelling myself out the door and power-walking back to the Green House dormitory as I finally stopped fighting the blood as it rushed to my face, no doubt blushing cherry-red in a very confusing way for any outside observers as I sped hastily back to my dorm room.

Luckily, I was the only one in residence, and before my roommates could return, I quickly laid out my homework for the day, uncorking the flat-bellied ink bottle provided at my desk and whispering my spell as I held my hands over the array of pages. Something very like thin trails of smoke drifted down from my fingertips, winding around each other several inches above the pages in a simplified array. As I continued to chant, a strand of smoke separated from the main, drifting down to the inkwell and dipping inside.

In what looked very odd to an outside observer, even when I was the one casting the spell, the surface of ink began to shrink as the black liquid was siphoned up into my spell, darkening the desk-wide pentagram of smoke hovering above my scattered homework pages as something rather like black snowflakes began to drift down onto the paper.

With an escalating series of sixty-five syllables, the branched strand of smoke broke off and dissolved, and a faint wind began to flutter the pages laid out on my desk. I spoke a final sharp word and closed my eyes as there was a miniature clap of thunder and shriek of tortured space, air puffing out against my face as a wind of displacement gusted out across the room and there was a loud rustling of scattered pages. Opening my eyes, I saw that my homework had been scattered everywhere, the pages draped every which where across a good twenty feet around my desk –but all the ones I could see were covered in my handwriting.

I smirked smugly as I got up and began gathering them together again, sorting out the scattered papers as I did by class and subject. There was no harm in taking a shortcut, after all, not when writing out all the information that I knew would take _forever_ , and I had so many better things to do. This spell just simply copied out all my knowledge onto the pages in the way I _would_ if I had the time, and as such was most definitely worth the effort of learning.

Now I could focus on studying my magic books, and simply pretend that _they_ were my homework, when my fellow dorm residents came in.

_***Time Skip***_

I clawed a little more knowledge out of the dusty magic tomes before I figured it was time to try and practice my sabre work, since Edward Midford had probably done his own homework by this point and would be in a prime position to cozy up to.

To my pleasure, I had been right, and he was right there in the Green House fencing room as I entered, freshly changed into a fencing uniform, and we exchanged a friendly nod as I chalked up my hands. For the next hour or so we were mostly silent, except for grunts of effort and strain as we practiced our form and lunges in the mirror, or occasionally thirsty gulps as we refreshed ourselves from water in the pitcher and cups presumably laid out for just that purpose. I figured Edward would be snippy if I interrupted him during what I was rapidly learning was a very complex and involved sport, requiring a lot of concentration, and thus resolved to wait to (gently) start interrogating him until after either one or both of us took a small break or stopped practicing altogether.

I also resolved to eat a lot more at the breakfast(s), tea, and supper tomorrow, since evidently I had severely misjudged the amount of physical effort and strain I would be putting on my still-slightly-injured body. I was so hungry, but my apocalypse bag was at home, since I wasn't willing to risk it being searched or noticed by Undertaker here at the school. After all, that bag technically had everything I owed nowadays, and most of it was heavily sentimental or practical –or both.

Largely both.

Though it was probably not a good idea to try and think of anything _but_ mastering my fencing moves, the thoughts of just how I would broach the subject to Edward kept intruding into my head as I lunged and retreated, watching my reflection in the mirrors as I kept trying to adjust my stance to be a little more narrow, a little more on the angle, a little more balanced. Fencing was _hard_.

Not being able to check how long it was until the bell rang again, I slowed to a halt as Edward stopped his own practice and walked over in a finalized sort of way to the wall with shelves. He rummaged in his neatly-folded uniform and pulled out a pocketwatch, flipping it open to check the time.

"Bell soon?" I asked, which was an innocent enough opener.

"Indeed. We should most likely gather our equipment and head up."

He paused, then looked at me inquisitively. I caught the meaning behind his oblique look and turned away from the mirror, sheathing my sabre with a _click_ and meeting him with an outstretched hand.

"Ryan Thompson, a transfer student here at Weston. Nice to meet you."

"Lord Edward Midford, son of Alexis Leon and Francis Midford. A pleasure."

We ended the handshake, and we each stepped back a little as I readjusted my grip on my sheathed sabre.

 _Alright, so gently lead into the topic._ I thought with a nervous lick of my lips, trying to remember and emulate Ciel and all the other duplicitous, manipulative sneaky bastards I knew from anime and fiction.

"You're, uh, Greenhill's fag, right? You woke us up this morning?" I asked and he nodded modestly, straightening his shoulders a little and looking as though he would've adjusted his tie if he had it. "How'd you get that gig? I mean, like…how old are you?"

"Seventeen. Why?"

"Well," I said as I rummaged around alongside him in getting our normal uniforms out of the cubbys. "-fags are supposed to be underclassmen, right? How are you still, like, in that role?"

"Upperclassmen may select fags from anyone in a lower year." Edward said as he buttoned up his undershirt, apparently not taking offense. "Typically, it is a given that those of us in fifth form have far too much on our plates as we near graduation to be drafted to serve as fags, so it is an unspoken understanding among students of Weston to avoid selecting fifth-formers and fourth-formers as fags. However, the prefects have an even heavier workload than the average graduating student, so they generally select underclassmen just a year below themselves to serve as both their fags and, possibly, candidates for the prefects of the next year."

By this point Edward had replaced his tie, and he jerked the knot tight with a primly satisfied look on his face. "It gives us practice in attending to the duties of a prefect without being in a position to muck everything up, should we commit an error. Us following our prefects in taking up the role of prefect is tradition, after all. And at Weston, tradition is absolute."

 _Don't I know it._ I thought, deadpan, as a sweatdrop formed behind my head. After all, if my memory served me correctly and my presence hadn't disturbed the cosmic universe in some weird way, Greenhill and the other prefects had killed Derrick Arden and the others to preserve Weston's "tradition".

_Then again, Derrick Arden was a bully and a tool, so like…really, the world isn't that much worse for his absence. Fuck, for a number of people it's probably better._

"That makes sense." I said complacently. "So you hang out with Greenhill a lot, then?"

"Oh yes. I and the other fags attend the P4 at the Swan Gazebo during Afternoon Break every day, usually. We also meet during other break times to attend to the duties of the day and the planning thereof."

"Neat." I said, and noticed he was giving me a side-eye. "Sounds like a lot of work, though. Not something I'd want to do, that's for sure, especially not when I'm just trying to learn the ropes myself." I ended my reassurance with a bright smile.

Edward relaxed marginally. "As you say. It is a very demanding role, but I hope to serve Greenhill to the best of my abilities for the remainder of his final year."

"A noble sentiment." I agreed with what was hopefully a pleasantly charming smile as we turned to leave the fencing room.

_Just hope it won't bite you in the ass later, dude._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 11.17 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: September 11th, 2019, 11.05 AM USA Central Time


	51. That Butler, Staking

_Arya's POV:_

For the next few days, I was able to relax a little as life settled into a schedule. Almost every morning after turn-out, I impatiently checked my fingers under the bandages to see whether or not my nails had grown far enough to preform daily functions without pain, and always heaved out a sigh and wrapped them back up. My tolerance for how short my nails could be had gotten a lot easier of late, since I'd spent nearly seven months without the use of practically _any_ nail whatsoever on my hands, which was raw and painful and often nothing short of excruciating, but I was also not keen on ripping my new nails clean out (again) by going too hard with unbandaged fingers at fencing or cricket or whatever new macho challenge the other members of Green Lion House threw my way.

Inhaling my two breakfasts and studying (and drowsing) the morning away in the stupor-inducing annoyance of lessons, I tended to intensify my inquiries and non-honeytrap cozening later in the afternoon, when I could weasel my way into the two members of the P4's circle more easily by actively participating in their sports. This was a new experience for me, trying to pry information out of someone, and more than once I had to twiddle my fingers and mutter under my breath to erase whatever damning statement I'd made from Greenhill or Edward's mind, an experience that always left me on edge.

Because, as previously stated, getting memory spells even a little bit wrong was tantamount to lobotomizing someone with a soup spoon –painful, messy, and not at all good for the brain.

But anyways. I was learning, slowly but surely figuring out how to subtly direct a line of inquiry and how to avert suspicion (something I was already good at), how to introduce a subject without making it obvious that I had, and how to actively attempt to befriend someone in a very short period of time with the aggressive intent to milk them for information. This was very good for me, because Ciel had been sending letters nearly every day, subtly and rather impatiently asking me about my progress –he was most likely raring to get out of this "stuffy miniature garden," as he called it later in the manga, and honestly I sympathized. Maybe it was because I had been playing truant for nearly a year, but being dropped into school again was _maddeningly_ boring and constrictive, and I was certain my annoyance and ennui was due in part to how stultifying Weston lessons were, prestigious educational history be damned.

_Maybe they just give Green House students boring useless lessons because they know we're more focused on our pitching arm or whatever and not paying any attention to the teacher at all._

Mind, I did learn some things –they just weren't practical in any age I would find myself in later. Finding out how to properly skin a lion in our Naturalistics class, for instance, while fascinating, was not exactly something that would come up, ever, when I got to the twenty-first century.

A subtle but equally fatal factor, for my attention span at least, was the fact that we were diving right into May in a time period without even a nodding acquaintance with air conditioning, and it was _warm_ in all the classrooms, which did not help my efforts to keep from dozing off on my desk at all. Granted, my drowsiness was partially because I wasn't used to using my legs as much as I was now, chasing after stray balls on the cricket pitch and lunging all around in fencing class, and staying up perhaps later than I should writing reports to Ciel, but it wasn't _entirely_ my fault, I swear. Those lessons truly were boring as shit.

Speaking of which, I had to write all my letters to Ciel by candlelight after my roommates were asleep, or at least drowsy enough not to take notice of what I did with these notes afterwards, which meant I had to stay up nearly past curfew, which was tense enough as it was.

I did feel fantastically like an old-age spy though, or perhaps a Gothic novelist, writing by candlelight in an old Gregorian building covered in vines and ivy and filled with old-fashioned Victorian furniture, but that didn't signify to my alertness levels in the morning.

`In response to your earlier letter,`

`The dandelions in my garden are thriving, sadly. I can get no information on how the weeds keep popping up, and I can't seem to get any true flowers to grow –is your little window-box of bluebells having the same problem?`

`The under-gardener tells me that I should focus more on my studies, and that it is the head gardener's duty to attend to the flowers, not mine. I just can't help myself, though! Why, just the other day, I suggested that perhaps we take a leaf out of our neighbor's book (who grows such superb aconite, as you remember), and it was suggested that I was being`

Here I paused, trying to think of the right British 19th-century word. Finding it, I groaned and crumpled up the entire page –there were no _words_ on this _earth_ to express how much I missed the backspace button in this time period– and held the little ball up to my candle as I pulled another sheet towards me, waiting until the first one caught and smoldered before dropping it on the base of the candlestick. I painstakingly repeated the previous parts of my letter, continuing to scribble as my pen hand ached. I still wasn't _used_ to writing everything out by hand –when I took my notes for magic, I did so in short bursts, frequently with abbreviations and slang.

`-it was put to me that my wits had gone out wandering! True, my neighbor is a bit of an eccentric, and of course the under-gardener did not dare to speak to me so, but I saw it in his eyes and the stance of his shoulders. What has the world come to, when such men may dismiss us by virtue of the working secrets that they know and we do not? Because, after all, I know they know such secrets, because no man may simply lift up a flower, roots and all, and plant it in another place without some kind of secret knowledge. Have you discerned any of them yourself? I know that, despite your life in the city, you are still a devoted gardener, and personally I would wish for some aid, for I just do not know what to do with my staff.`

`–A Fellow Botanist`

I held the letter up and inspected it with a jaundiced eye. The bit about uprooting and repotting "plants" was a bit heavy-handed, but sue me, I couldn't think of a better gardening-related metaphor that Ciel would understand –or at least, not one so _specifically_ tuned to the situation at hand. I shrugged and rolled the foolscap paper up into a scroll, sealing it with a slightly clumsy blob of sealing wax from my red wax stick, before standing up and carefully licking the fingers of my free hand, making sure to drool over the pads of my index and middle finger almost to an embarrassing extent. I pinched the wick with these two damp bandaged fingers, wincing a little at the burn of heat against my fingertips before the candle was snuffed out –without leaving a telltale waft of scented smoke, proof that I had been using it until recently. Granted, I could've done that with the ice spell I was still working hard to master, but I was _trying_ not to be too profligate with my magic in order not to alert Undertaker to my presence, and anyways, this was a neat trick to master for any parties in the future. I just slathered my tongue all over my fingers because, well, cotton wicked away moisture, and also, I didn't want burn marks all over my bandages.

In plain terms, I was a sissy about it.

Nonetheless, I tiptoed over to the window and gingerly eased it open –iron hinges and old fastenings meant that our window screeched like an owl when you tried to move it anywhere– enough for me to stick my hand out, and I carefully placed my letter under the hasp, before easing the window shut again, pinching the scrolled letter between the window and the windowsill. Presumably Sebastian came by every night to check and remove any scrolls he found, since mine were always gone when I checked in the morning.

Daily, or rather _nightly_ letter delivered, I tiptoed back over to my bed and wiggled beneath the covers, waiting for sleep to take me.

Given as Ciel and I had different schedules and different houses, my first sign of the inevitable confrontation between Ciel and Maurice Cole was when Greenhill stalked up to the cricket pitch one afternoon about two weeks after I showed up at Weston with thunderclouds of temper practically rumbling tangibly on his brow, and he grabbed his bat and changed into his cricket uniform with short, jerky, angry movements, each one accompanied by a cross, barely-audible mutter, just enough that to know he was mouthing words, but not quite enough for the rest of us (who were shamelessly eavesdropping on him as we climbed into our own uniforms) to articulate what he was actually saying.

My opportunity to poke the bear came up, of course, when we paired up for practice, which thanks to my determined cozening happened rather frequently –or at least, frequently outside of his clear self-allotted time to practice with the actual team, help anyone else who seemed to struggle at any time, or play with any student who wanted to whack a few rounds with the so-vaunted house prefect.

"So," I began in a perfectly innocent tone, eyeing my partner sidelong as we marched towards a clear strip of grass. "You seem, uh, _upset_ today."

I was _going_ to go for "pissed," but realized midway through my sentence that that might be another of the words that either linguistic drift or different cultures rendered incomprehensible for Greenhill. We had those moments rather more frequently than I liked, and I wanted to avoid another blank-staring-filled language session right now.

Since people fermenting in a temper _always_ took the opportunity, when presented, to vent their grievances to a sympathetic ear, Greenhill immediately burst out into an outraged tirade.

"The _disrespect!"_ he growled vehemently as he took his position as batsman, evidently in a mood to hit things, and I nodded and set my own bat down, beginning to back up towards the appropriate spot a few dozen feet away. "A prefect's day is filled with tasks and responsibilities, and should we extend an invitation to attend upon us during the rare hours of leisure we have, it is a privilege and an honor to accept and attend!"

I made a sympathetic noise and lobbed the ball straight and hard: Greenhill adjusted his stance seamlessly and whacked it nearly all the way to the stands, where a bespectacled ginger and his stout friend paused to toss it back.

"And then –Phantomhive!" he heaved as I caught the ball and wound up for another pitch. "He shows up to our scheduled meeting _two hours_ late, and has the _audacity_ to question us as to what we mean when we ask him why he's late! The –the utter disregard for another's time, for our position as prefects!"

"Mm." I commented wisely, watching the tiny black dot that was the ball sail away into the blue sky, landing with a faint _thump_ a few meters away from another pair halfway across the field. I caught it as they chucked it back, and pitched again.

"I can hardly credit it! Would you have disrespected common courtesy to such an extent, Thompson?! No! Not a single student at Weston would, would have the clout to do such a thing! _Ugh!"_ Greenhill snarled almost to himself, hitting with all the strength in his muscular arms and shoulders and putting the torque of his body into the swing as well, so that I watched gloomily as the ball sailed all the way over the back of the stands. "Pardon my language. But –but still! The carelessness! The audacity! Does he have _no_ respect for the rules and traditions of Weston College?!"

"Mm." I agreed as I went to get a spare ball from my bag of spares in the grass beside my bat.

"Bluer has reprimanded him already, of course, and no doubt he has been punished suitably, but all the same! He has let down my expectations: it seems his polished reputation was nothing but gossip after all!"

Greenhill paused in his ranting as I walked back over with the new ball: he seemed to be considering something carefully behind his dull green eyes.

"I don't suppose _you_ , too, have been laughing into your sleeves at the prefects?" he asked gruffly, hefting his bat. "That you would do something similar? Have I simply…lost all respect from my fellow students at Weston? Have we not been attending to our duties well enough, to match up with our forebearers?"

I paused, touched a little by Greenhill's display of human vulnerability to another student he hadn't even known for _that_ long, rather than the icily polished and robotic demeanor of a-prefect-and-his-duties that he otherwise exuded all the time, and then grinned.

"I'll respect you heaps, sir, if you show me how to do that slug you did yesterday." I said, not so much tossing as _gently sliding_ Ciel under the bus as I wound up for another pitch. Greenhill looked at me and managed a wry snort.

"I think that can be managed."

* * *

`My Dear City Companion,`

`The strangest thing happened today! My undergardener, whom you will remember as the man attempting to groom our garden's hill of those pesky dandelions, came to me in ferment just this past afternoon! Evidently some inconsiderate soul had reneged on a promise to deliver some rare, newly discovered items for our gazebo...?`

`In any case, he was quite put out. I did my best to soothe him, but do you have any advice on dealing with this situation? After all, those pesky weeds will not tend to themselves.`

`-A Fellow Botanist`

* * *

Having sent _that_ missive, I was not at all surprised to find another folded note under my pillow when I tried to drop off the next night, sealed in a thin cheap envelope with a formless blob of bright red wax.

I rolled over a little in bed to consider it, squinting at the dark ink letters as my silhouette, while conveniently blocking out the fact I held something, also obscured the light from the full moon leaking in through the mullioned creaky window.

* * *

`My Fellow Botanist,`

`Considering the importance of that gazebo and your cultivation of the plants thereof, I can understand his outrage. You may wish to check the credibility of your suppliers, as such men may sometimes fall into the habit of lying and deceit, in order to further their own ends.`

`I myself have recently run across similar difficulties, and can only recommend you employ an expert in that particular field –if you may pardon me the pun– as I have done. You plan to plant a bower of roses around that gazebo, correct? I may suggest a mutual acquaintance: you no doubt remember our guests over Christmas, just this past year? I believe that they have a very capable man: we shall have to discuss his work at our next meeting.`

`Speaking of family events, Father does send his greetings, and has reminded me to inquire after your efforts on the grounds. Have you managed to wheedle any education out of those groundskeepers of yours? I certainly know I have faced endless frustration in attempting to wrest their gardening knowledge from them, but what else are we to do?`

`In any case, I see we have much to discuss at our next meeting.`

`Until then,  
-Your Fellow in the City`

* * *

I blinked once or twice when I finished reading, then groaned and rolled my head back a little on the pillow. According to our code, talking about "father's greetings" meant to meet in the chapel after lights-out on the same day as the delivered message.

And since it was lights-out right now…

Muttering salty words under my breath, I wiggled out from the nice warm covers and crept on tiptoe over to the window. The doors were locked at night –which was a fire hazard waiting to happen, quite frankly, though in all fairness the doors were also thin and liable to be kicked in on the off-chance of an emergency– so my only options were this or lock-picking, which I was abysmal at…and the locks were on the outside of the doors, anyways.

Continuing to crossly mouth certain choice words that would be inaudible to anyone at any distance whatsoever, I put my shoulders against the wall and roughly levered the creaking window open, the thick iron hinges near-fused together from time and the elements. Once it was about a foot apart, I leaned into the gap, twisting my head a little to see what my options were for late-night escapades. It was hard to see how students, teachers, or prefects would _know_ if someone snuck out, save if they hadn't made it back by turn-out in the morning, but the way Greenhill and the other prefects had investigated Derrick in the manga seemed to imply that there were patrols throughout the corridors, or at the very least someone who wandered about every so often to check that things were still locked down.

In any case, I was going to have to be careful about this, given as I would be sneaking out (and down a wall) in a radiantly bright, loose draped nightshirt, along with tighter dark trousers, not to mention bare feet.

I saw a thick scroll of ivy vines to my direct left, and peering closely at the moonlit stone wall gave me a good idea of the nicks, scrapes, and divots in the bricks and mortar that I could take advantage of on my way down. The doozy would just be getting out of the dorm room.

With a gulp, I eeled my way onto the thick stone windowsill, half-straddling it as I awkwardly reached out to grip the frame and balance myself, sweating a little and hoping I wasn't about to need to cast a wall underneath myself and potentially alert the Undertaker of my presence here on campus. Thankfully, I didn't.

With some careful wiggling, I was eventually half-crouched in the aperture with both hands anxiously gripping the top edge of the stone framing the window, balanced on the balls of my bare feet on the lead-lined frame of the bottom and facing into the room where my three dormmates slept tranquilly, unaware that Ryan was currently poised outside our window like some too-enthusiastic Batman cosplayer.

I swallowed hard as a soft evening breeze languidly blew by.

Alright then. I was in a good position to start. I could start. At any moment now, I could start. Just as soon as I found a good foothold on the wall. I could start.

"Motherfucker." I whispered vehemently to myself, my palms feeling slick with sweat as I nervously, shakily slid out my bare foot, wincing a little at the touch of dew-wet leaves on my bare sole as I blindly fumbled around for a hold, perhaps on a good thick branch. Rule of three and all that –when climbing, never search for a new foot or handhold unless you had your other three holds secured already.

I found my not-so-metaphorical footing on a stout intersection of two vines, and with a hefty gulp, I shuffled sideways a little, crabbing my way along the wall and window until I was poised over more of the former than the latter. With even more care than before, I slowly shifted my left foot, hunkering down and slightly loosening my grip on the stone as I reached blindly down with my foot, looking for another hold.

_Found it. Okay. Good._

The whole problem with ivy-climbing down or up a wall, despite what period novels may tell you, is that ivy, and all other manner of climbing vines, _really isn't meant_ for bearing up the human bodyweight. Granted, some ivy vines grow to the properly prescribed climbing length (as thick or thicker than one's wrist), but those were rare, and generally monstrously huge and old as a matter of course. And since ivy and other climbing vines had adverse effects on buildings (despite their lovely effect), most people uprooted the plants before they grew that big.

Take this vine I was using. The thickest, most central parts of the trunk were about three fingers-width wide, which meant that with every tentative shift and hold I did I could both hear and feel minute creaks and tears in the entire plant, as my correspondingly gargantuan bodyweight threatened to rip the tendrils holding the ivy to the wall right out of their moorings.

A nerve-wracking experience, and one I do not recommend.

In any case, I finally made it to the ground with a wordless wheeze of relief, and dropped from the vine as soon as I was within safe jumping distance. The grit and dirt scratched at my bare feet as I landed, but with a faint grimace, I ignored that and looked around for any potential witnesses, before making off at a rapid run across the grounds.

_***Time Skip***_

I arrived at the chapel only slightly out of breath, and very pleased with myself. Once I had figured out the texture of the earth, pavement, and grass hereabouts, I could pelt across the lawns with relative impunity, and two things about that were infinitely satisfying to me. Firstly, it seemed that my wind hadn't suffered from my long abstinence from running: that, or all the exercise I was doing had built up my endurance and my leg muscles again. In either case, it was good to know I was ready for a good long sprint, should anything horrific happen in my near future.

The second thing, of course, was that running barefoot through a forbidden, dew-sprinkled grass lawn in the dead of night, surrounded by old lichen-covered British buildings and wearing a loose, trailing white nightshirt, made one feel _wonderfully_ ghostly. I was half-disappointed that no younger students were there to peep through windows, so I couldn't flutter my fingers at them and shout _"Boo!"_

Ahem. In any case.

Since several important people's offices were located in this building –not to mention the fabled Midnight Tea Party was held somewhere on this location– I didn't dare knock on the large, carved wooden doors, carefully polished through years of exposure and elbow grease, and instead tentatively pushed the nearest one just a little more open.

Wary as a torn-eared alley cat, I crept into the chapel proper, glancing all around for any sign of Ciel and Sebastian –or the prefects, whom I knew to be present somewhere in the building.

Or were they, though? Was the Midnight Tea Party an every-night event, or just a celebratory thing after the cricket finals? I couldn't imagine it was every night, now that I thought of it, or how else would the prefects manage their daily workload on such little sleep?

I swallowed hard as my eyes raked the stone-shrouded darkness of the murky chapel, searching for the least little flash of lantern-light, the tiniest glint of artificial illumination. In either case, I wasn't going to be taking any chances.

The barest thread of a hiss met my ears, and I turned swiftly, hand falling to the knife I had belted to my thigh, seeing a tucked-back nook near the far way of the church. Doubtlessly, it was intended as a sort of rectory for some statue of a saint –likely of St. George, for whom this college was dedicated– so that students could pray or sit in silent contemplation away from the echoing vastness of the larger chapel, and appreciate whatever statue it was away from the other decorations and carvings.

In that pocket of deeper darkness against the gloomy black of the stone church walls, I could pick out two shadows. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the lack of moonlight in the chapel, I saw the smaller of the figures was crowned by a murky blur of lighter blue-black darkness –Ciel's hair– above an indistinct paler shadow cut in half by the inky black slash of his eyepatch. Sebastian rose behind him in the gloom, thin as a gallows-tree and as ominously looming as the statute of a life-size dragon, an amalgam of shadows that seemed to deepen the complete black of the windowless nook they were tucked away in. I crept over, wincing a little at the scrape of grit on my feet grinding against the smooth stone of the cold floor as I walked.

Though it was hard to see in the cave-dark of the rounded aperture we found ourselves in, I thought I glimpsed Ciel's eye widen as I passed through the last dim bar of moonlight filtering through the stain-glass windows.

"What are you _wearing?"_ he hissed as I slid into the nook with him and Sebastian, and I raised an eyebrow, then realized he probably couldn't see that cue any better than I could see his.

"My nightshirt. S'that a problem?"

I saw the dark gap of his mouth open in Ciel's face as the young earl spluttered faintly. "You -a lady -how can you- do you know how _indecent_ that is?!" he managed to squawk, and I glanced over at Sebastian, who seemed coldly indifferent to the both of us. I then shrugged a little as I turned back to look at Ciel.

"Boo-hoo, bitch." I said flatly. My bed was warm and everything between here and there had not been, and the soles of my feet were scraped, scuffed, and dirty from clambering down a vine-covered wall and walking across a lawn in the dark. "I'm wearing a male illusion _and_ feminine undergarments underneath this, just in case someone can see under the illusion."

By this I meant Sebastian, who seemed to scoff quietly as he caught my undertone.

"Ain't we here for something else?"

Ciel drew in a sharp breath through his nose, then let it out. "Fine. Very well." he muttered tersely. "You are aware that I…slipped up in attending a meeting with the prefects?"

"Greenhill came to the cricket field complaining about it."

"My lack of attendance was due to the machinations of one Maurice Cole. Heard of him?"

"Redmond's fag, allegedly the 'prettiest boy in school'. Given how neurotic you are about doing things in time and on schedule, I'm gonna guess he hoodwinked you into that slip-up."

I heard a faint scraping sound in the darkness as Ciel worked his jaw slightly, obviously grinding his teeth, and on my right, further into the nook, Sebastian rumbled an amused-sounding note deep in his throat.

"The young master miscalculated how precocious some humans are in their deviousness, jealousy, and manipulation, and was thus all-too-easily entrapped." he murmured, and I could _hear_ the slight curve of his smile in the demon's voice. "In any case, Maurice Cole instructed the young master to attend to the prefects at 4, whereas the actual meeting time was 2 PM, thus forcing the young master to inadvertently keep the P4 waiting for two hours."

"Ouch." I muttered sympathetically. Ciel huffed with anger.

"Regardless, Maurice Cole is evidently a highly-practiced liar, and exposing him as such will both exonerate my deeds and further ingrain me with the P4 in one fell swoop. To that purpose, I have written and enlisted that wretched prince in our plans."

I raised both eyebrows, as if this was news to me. "Soma? You're inviting him? Is this to infiltrate Red House, then?"

"Exactly." The thin slice of Ciel's smile was as icy and sharp-edged as a glass splinter in the dark. "He will be able to trace Maurice Cole's movements far more intensely than either one of us, and Sebastian is preoccupied with my chores during most hours."

I wasn't sure if I either _heard_ or _sensed_ the exasperated breath of air from the demon looming in the shadows a few feet away from us, at a respectful distance from his contractor.

"As you are leery of preforming magic on school grounds, I want you to continue supporting both Soma and myself in whatever ways you think you can manage." Ciel continued in a low voice, folding his arms over his chest. "Your contact with Maurice Cole has been completely minimal thus far, and in case our plans go awry, I wish for you to remain in the back pocket, as it were."

"Having me be the secret cavalry, ready to swoop in at the last second, then?" I asked with a wry smile, and Ciel huffed, rolling his visible eye.

"Don't flatter yourself. Additionally, if at all possible, I would also like you to avoid contact with the prince: everything he thinks shows on his face, and I don't want him blowing your cover."

I frowned in disappointment, but understood his reasoning.

"Maurice Cole may be a pathological liar, but when all's said and done, he's a schoolyard brat who has yet to cut his eyeteeth on the real world." Ciel's smirk was positively toothy now, all lethal and mercenary and sharklike. I was surprised he wasn't tapping his fingertips together while seated in a plush leather chair. "I'm convinced that there shall be evidence somewhere, somehow, of his misdeeds, and once we have found it, I shall contrive a way to bring it fully to light."

"Trick him into confessing?" I tried.

"He won't utter a word to his detriment, not without proof." Ciel dismissed me. "But nonetheless, a good strategy for after we've got the evidence firmly in hand. Public opinion can be swayed by any number of lies and half-truths, but an admittance from the very liar's mouth is hard for them to deny afterwards, especially when their utterance was made in the presence of witnesses, which we shall, of course, ensure."

"It shouldn't take much to find evidence of his lying after we get a few nibbles." I said, folding my arms and chafing at my elbows through the draped sleeves. It was a bit cold in here with only a thin white nightshirt and a half-bra half-binder between me and the outside world. "You're right in that he's just some childish bully –and their schemes tend to be built on a careful network of lies. Once one little detail falls out of place, the whole palace of cards tends to come crashing down."

"Indeed." Ciel's evil smirk grew bigger. "And I intend to teach him a lesson for squandering my efforts."

_***Time Skip***_

It was therefore no surprise to me –or rather, even less of a surprise than usual– when I slouched out of Green House the next morning, bleary-eyed even after the business end of five consecutive cups of sugar-laden tea, and saw nothing less than an extravagant parade of Indian royal staff mincing onto the grounds, complete with an elephant with a palanquin and mahout atop it, with Soma, undoubtably, seated inside the former. The whole procession was raising quite a rumpus near the gates, with students from all four houses gathering around to marvel at it.

"Neat." I grunted, and sourly tugged down my top hat as I went about my business. Ciel's order to stay away from Soma made sense –the dude's poker face sucked worse than a defective vacuum– but I was still somewhat disappointed, to say the least, at being unable to continue our acquaintance while at the school.

Oh well. Class awaited me.

I dozed my way through most of my morning coursework, having discovered, providentially, that since Ciel and I wouldn't be here any longer than early June, and it was already sliding into May, I didn't actually have to _care_ about getting good grades, since I'd only be here three months: I just had to pacify the teacher. Furthermore, my existence was now nicely ingrained enough in the general populace that, while risky behavior was still a definite no-no, I didn't have to religiously tiptoe my way through every day acting as sickeningly innocent and rule-abiding as humanly possible.

So I caught up on some lost sleep, snarfed down some extra food, and tried not to humiliate, overexert, or cut myself in fencing, all of which were harder than one might think, before dashing off to scribble out my stuff in the afternoon homework hour. Greenhill suckered me into playing an actual cricket match with the rest of the Green House team, all of whom were vastly more competent than I was. Due to all the horseback riding and my morning exercises, I was strong and fairly athletic, and I had good reflexes, but these men had been playing this sport for years in a highly competitive setting, _and_ were all natural athletes to begin with, _and_ had been honing their skills for just as long as they'd been playing.

Still, I managed not to disgrace myself, which was the important thing, and returned with the others to our dorm in a state of sweaty satisfaction.

* * *

`My Dear City Companion,`

`It turns out our gazebo is putting up more of a fight than we thought. The acquaintance you so kindly suggested has indeed arrived, but wading through all the thorns around the roses has become quite the challenge. Our gazebo looks as though it is locked away behind the rose bowers! I am doing my best to continue, but I fear it will be some time before we can prune the roses down to a manageable size.`

`I seem to recollect you have some plans to cut down the thicket near your own gazebo? If you could share any tips and tricks on how that was achieved, it would be most wonderful.`

`With salutations,  
-A Fellow Botanist`

* * *

`My Fellow Botanist,`

`I regret to inform you that I relied quite completely on the gardener I suggested to you earlier: he was the one to cut the thicket down to size and penetrate all the way through. He was quite adept at gathering and arranging the sheared blooms for my benefit afterwards, as well. I am afraid that in this case we must rely on him entirely to solve your problem.`

`Best wishes,  
-Your Fellow in the City`

* * *

`My Fellow Botanist,`

`Splendid news! The gardener I suggested to you has finished with his work, and sent me the most wonderful bouquet of red roses. Father really was most impressed with them, and sends his hearty thanks and invitation for our next ball. I know you will be pleased to attend, and then we may continue our interrupted game of chess, which I know you so enjoyed.`

`On another tangent, Father also expressed the strangest wish for a bouquet of dandelions from your field. I can hardly understand it, but we must both work together to appease his wishes, I suppose. You remember where we met in my home to discuss business last time? I would be pleased if we met there again to speak on the arrangement of our flowers.`

`Seeing you very soon,  
-Your Fellow in the City`

* * *

I raised an eyebrow as I read Ciel's latest missive: only two days had passed since Soma had been invited to the school, and unless I was reading this letter wrong, he had already delivered proof of Maurice Cole's wrongdoing straight into Ciel's hands.

_Dude works fast._

Then again, if I remembered correctly, Ciel _had_ pretty much ordered Soma to tail Maurice Cole all day every day, so perhaps it wasn't surprising that he'd caught on to the bully's methods so quickly.

If I was also reading the rest of this letter correctly, Ciel wanted me to come meet with him in the Blue House dorms instead of the chapel to discuss our strategy for exposing Maurice Cole. With a shrug, I tucked the letter back into its envelope and stuffed both into the bottomless depths of my apocalypse bag, before going over to the window again and wrenching it open with a wince. The ivy had not exactly improved in strength –actually, since I'd used it multiple times, it had ripped away from the wall _more_ – and going down, or up, was an increasingly ticklish task.

But I managed it, somehow, and set off across the unearthly nighttime grounds, sticking close to walls and ducking under windows and darting across doors, sprinting as fast as I could across the darkly shimmering green lawns in the large open spaces and on a sharp lookout for the faint spot of candlelight glowing off somewhere down along the paths. Why –when carrying one made you stand out like a sore thumb– the upperclassmen and the other authority figures that occasionally went on rambling patrols across the grounds and dorms carried a brightly-lit lantern was beyond me, unless it was to obliquely warn students to get back to their proper places before the patrol caught them instead of having to go to all the tedious effort and rigmarole of actually catching and punishing wayward pupils.

In any case, my way was pretty much clear, and I circled around to where I remembered Sebastian's, or rather Housemaster Michaelis's, office to be. Scaling the wrought-iron fence was a bit trickier in the dark and with some dew on the already-sheer lengths of iron, but I managed it with only _one_ probable-bruise across my heaving stomach as I yanked myself over the top and felt something blunt and metallic dig sharply into my side before I hastily shifted my angle.

Striding placidly across the lawn, I dug my foot –since this time I had been smart enough to grab a pair of soft leather fencing shoes before venturing out– into a convenient gap in the mortar of the stone wall, climbing up slowly and with many grunts and heaves of effort. If a patrol came by right now, I was pretty solidly fucked, since the drop below was far too dangerous to just let go and plunge and I was about ten feet away from a window to crawl through, but true to form, nobody bothered to circle a fenced-in dorm full of bluestocking boys, most of whom were undoubtably dreaming boring dreams of schoolwork and tests, having gone to a virtuously early sleep. And since the Housemasters sometimes patrolled, and _Sebastian_ was the Housemaster of this particular dorm…

Well, needless to say, I wasn't all that worried about getting caught at this point, which was good, because coming up with a plausible explanation for why I was scaling the walls of a dorm not my own at lord knew what time of night was beyond me, and potentially even beyond Ciel or Sebastian.

As I grunted and awkwardly, strenuously jerked my elbow over the thick stone sill of the window, hauling myself up, I saw that a candle was lit inside a glass lamp in the room, with a blurry shape that was almost certainly Sebastian –I recognized the shape of the head and angular shoulders– going about some kind of business at his table beside it. Feeling for another hold with my other foot, I found it, and pulled myself a little higher as I yanked my other arm over the sill to knock a rapid tattoo against the class before gravity pulled me down again and I had to protectively cup both arms over the sill for risk of falling.

"C'mon…" I wheezed, sweat breaking out in a fine sheen all over my body, before sighing in relief as a small figure moved across the window and it was pulled in by Ciel, who unlike me was fully dressed apart from his morning coat. He looked distinctly unimpressed by my trembling and panting as I held myself up on the mostly-sheer wall, which was dumb because he had asked me to come meet him tonight.

"Can't you enter a room without all this nonsense?" Ciel sighed, closing his uncovered eye in exasperation, before he moved aside slightly, inviting me into the room.

"I _could_ walk through an entire dorm full of people that would raise the alarm upon seeing me, possibly getting lost on the way, _or_ I could just scale the wall and be done with it." I said with a roll of my eyes, stretching my toes and reaching out to laboriously haul myself into the room through the window like a fish on a line. "Its faster and easier this way, though honestly I would _love_ to use some stairs instead."

"Mm." Ciel gave me a dubious look as I straightened and cracked my back, before rubbing the vaguely achy part of my stomach where I was sure that bruise was forming and glancing at Sebastian, who continued to work while ignoring both of us.

"So, you wanted to plan?"

"Indeed." Ciel walked over to where Sebastian was working so industriously, plucking a flat, rose-shaped card a little larger than his palm from a stack of the same on the demon's left side. The little card was tattered and torn into what looked like dozens of tiny pieces, patched back together with a series of adhesive tape strips, with a decorative design like rose petals on one side and a blank white face with ruled lines on the other, covered in neat copperplate handwriting and with a red silk ribbon tied in a loop around one hole-punched point. "Prince Soma has most helpfully discovered that Maurice Cole spends his time in the dead of night delivering _these."_

He held it out to me, and I carefully took the card, turning it over to the printed side. The stiff paper was slightly sticky, which led me to believe that adhesive had been painted over the restored version to keep its shape, and contained a polite request for a "trifling little trouble" in collecting data and delivering it to Maurice Cole on a certain day at a certain time. It wasn't signed, but the mention of his name, not to mention the specific delivery details listed, was pretty damning.

I grinned slowly. "So we got our evidence now."

Ciel matched it with a far icier grin of his own. "Indeed. All that remains now is to exploit it."

My eyebrows furrowed a little. "What's the big deal?" I asked, walking over to Sebastian and laying the card back on the pile, noticing with interest and perhaps the teeniest grain of pity that he had a bowl of clearish fluid, undoubtably the same adhesive I had felt, and paintbrush, as well as a roll of tape, some miniscule tweezers, and a conical pile on a dish of what I initially thought was flaky ash but then realized was fragments of the same cards. He was working carefully and patiently at assembling a new one, wearing white gloves different from his normal ones and squinting in silent concentration as he carefully arranged the torn fragments on the table in preparation to splice them back together.

 _Yeesh, better him than me._ I thought with a grimace, before continuing. "I mean, can't we just show these to Redmond and be done?"

"We _could."_ Ciel acknowledged with a huff, collapsing in a nearby armchair that I was pretty sure was actually meant for the Housemaster. "But Maurice Cole would undoubtably deny it, and that would not serve to drive home the message that I am an indispensable and truly dedicated student at Weston to the prefects and their retinue."

I raised an eyebrow a little at this, but didn't argue.

"Ideally, we combine this with a spoken confession that Redmond overhears." Ciel continued, narrowing his eye a little as he stared off into the middle ground. "I plan to confront him in a secluded area, so he believes we are alone and his tongue will be that much looser. The third art room just before Fag Time shall suit admirably, as that is tucked far away from any student activity but close enough to the Swan Gazebo that he will not feel any pressure to be hasty and end our little "interview" too quickly. Undoubtably, he will suspect me of attempting to retaliate or otherwise confront him for my humiliation with the prefects, so he will have a contingency plan in place to keep me from talking."

"You sure you want to do this solo, then?" I asked uncomfortably, thinking of all the times someone had wanted silence for secrets in the past, and how often that silence involved fatal force and shallow graves.

Ciel smiled at me thinly. "That is where _you_ come in, Thompson. I want you to contact Greenhill and ask him on my behalf to allow the _rest_ of our plan to come to fruition. Beyond that, of course, I have Sebastian, so I will not be in real danger for even a moment. Maurice Cole will likely use schoolyard tactics for his defense in any case, which means he will most probably employ some of the more blindly obedient members of his entourage to humiliate, blackmail, or otherwise intimidate me into holding my tongue. He's clever enough, too, and knows how badly those little cards of his could cut him, which is undoubtably why he ordered his minions to rip them up and dispose of them, so it's not at all unlikely he will also provide some means of physically dealing with whatever proofs I bring to him as an outside bet. So…"

The Phantomhive's eye gleamed.

"This is what we'll do."

_***Time Skip***_

The next day, I was preforming every anxiety tic in the book, bouncing my leg from where I sat on one of the steps up to the Swan Gazebo, tapping my fingers spasmodically on my knee, glancing around everywhere, shifting awkwardly where I sat and compulsively adjusting my tie. I'd had a talk with the four prefects and gotten permission to arrange (well, for Sebastian to arrange) all the gramophone horns and trumpets tied to the Grecian pillars of the gazebo, and begged their indulgence as to listen and wait for whatever came through them, but I knew I'd stepped on pretty thin ice to convince them all of this, and if for whatever reason Ciel didn't spin this how he had originally, I would fall out of line.

Faint shuffling sounds echoed from the brass horns as the prefects and Edward Midford abruptly quieted.

 _"Well?"_ The voice wasn't Ciel's, so I had to guess it was Maurice Cole's. _"What do you want with me? You've called me to this room and all…I really must be getting to the Swan Gazebo, you know."_

 _"I won't take much of your time."_ Ciel's voice filtered through. _"I simply wanted to confirm a small matter. Cole: regarding your summons to me from the other day…it seems the message you conveyed was incorrect, after all."_

_"You're still saying that? Its not nice to blame others for your own mistakes."_

_"A friend confirmed it with our classmates. Since you're the most fair-faced boy at school, Cole, the onlookers were many. By the way, eighteen students testified that you "mistakenly" said 'at 4 PM.'"_

There was a sharp scuff of polished shoes and a swift intake of breath from the other party.

_"No. To call it a mistake, a mere slip of the tongue, is misleading. Because you allowed your tongue to slip on **purpose**."_

Maurice, however, seemed to have regathered himself. _"Hmph. Such a false accusation is serious indeed!"_

 _"In that case!"_ Ciel reposted. _"How do you explain the incidents involving four other students, including Joanne Harcourt?"_

 _"Huh?"_ Maurice asked, seemingly with a tinge of wariness to his tone.

 _"Of the students who were invited to the Swan Gazebo by the prefects, all those who broke their appointment claim it was due to communication troubles with you. For a prefect's fag to cut down the weak as you've done, goes to show just how much of a sly coward you are. Yours are the actions of an outright liar!"_ Ciel shouted. _"Moreover, you even leave your duties as a prefect's fag to other students."_

Maurice scoffed. _"Whatever can you mean?"_

_"Compiling the data Redmond requested. Ironing and shoe polishing. Even the preparing of dishes…you haven't done any of it yourself! Your competence is an utter sham!"_

Though Maurice Cole's voice still feigned to be smooth and unruffled, I caught more than a hint of tense bluffing under his calm tones. _"What wild fancy. How can you claim all that when you haven't any proof?"_

 _"Ah, but I do have proof."_ Ciel said with smugness coating every syllable, and there was a rustle of fabric as Maurice gasped.

_"Th-that's-!"_

_"Recognize this, do you? It's one of the cards you employ when commissioning your hangers-on to do your work for you."_ Ciel exposited for the benefit of us in the gazebo, as I turned a little to see Redmond pale and bite his lip as Bluer covered his face in shame or resignation. Ciel continued ruthlessly as I heard the faintest whisper of paper cards shuffling. _"This here is a request for the compilation of data. This one is for ironing. This one, shoe shining. This one, a request to the Red House cook to make a snack! Shall I go on? I've got many more. Each one is quite clearly written in your hand, down to the date and time."_

 _"How could they, after I made a point of telling them to get rid of the cards-?"_ Maurice gasped to himself, and Ciel pounced on the advantage.

_"Oh, they did just as you asked and disposed of them. What a relief that the refuse hadn't yet been collected! Such trouble it was, unearthing these tiny cards from the heap of rubbish gathered from all over the school!"_

_"Wha-!"_

_"And carefully restoring the cards, which were torn into very small pieces, was quite difficult as well."_ Ciel continued implacably.

 _You say that like you actually did any of the work._ I thought with a sweatdrop, remembering Sebastian's painstaking efforts that had continued throughout our meeting last night.

 _"What would Redmond think if he were to find out about all this? As a student of the storied Weston College, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Cole?!"_ Ciel said passionately, then lowered his tone, becoming peaceful, encouraging. _"I'm willing to overlook your deception of me and the others. But you should speak plainly to Redmond about this. Yours is a brotherly relationship built on trust…right?"_

 _"…yes, you're right."_ Maurice Cole muttered. _"I'll tell him."_

Still watching the prefects as they sat on their fainting couches, I watched Redmond sigh quietly at that response, melancholy relief suffusing his features as Greenhill, who had been standing tense with his cricket bat at parade rest, relaxed.

_"I'll tell him absolutely nothing! Who in their right bloody mind would?!"_

The prefects tensed again as someone snapped their fingers and there was a loud _bang_ of a door, or several doors, being slammed open as multiple sets of pounding feet entered the room with Ciel and Cole, and Ciel cried out. Greenhill, Edward, Bluer, and Violet all took to their feet and rushed down the other set of gazebo steps, running for the building, as Redmond sat in hypnotized silence and I cocked my head, wanting to hear the full resolution of this little play.

Paper shuffled and shoes squeaked, and Maurice Cole spoke again, his voice filled with snide mockery. _"You didn't actually think I'd come here unprepared, did you? You're a fool!"_ he snickered, and a match was struck as paper ignited with a hiss and rustle of flames. _"There we go! Evidence destroyed~! After you went to all that trouble to find it too…what a pity~!"_

Ciel grunted as there was a scuff of moving bodies.

 _"You irritate me! Who do you think you are?! You're getting uppity because the seniors have taken a passing fancy to you."_ Maurice snarled. 

Ciel remained passively silent as Maurice Cole's voice darkened again.

_"Whether or not I become a prefect at this school can make or break my future. That's why I've flattered and fawned over the prefects to within an inch of my life! Someone like you, a winner with a title, can never understand the feelings of a second son, who will never be in a position to inherit, can you?"_

_"I don't believe there's any value in a victory obtained by deceit!"_ Ciel cried with all the valiant pathos of a parable lead.

 _"Your good boy act makes me sick!"_ Maurice snarled, an attitude I honestly agreed with, if only because I actually knew Ciel to an extent and knew he was probably cackling on the inside at how much deeper his opponent was digging his metaphorical hole of trouble with every word and action. _"I will be the next prefect of Red House! And I will be the one Redmond loves best! **And I am the most beautiful one here in this school**!"_ Maurice cried as there was a shrill ripping of cloth.

 _"What are you-"_ Ciel suddenly cried, sounding honestly alarmed as I sat up straight, before there was a violent thud of something meeting abdominal flesh and Ciel was choked off into a spittle-flecked cry. _"Kah-haah!"_

 _"You really are a fool for picking a deserted place like this~!"_ Maurice sang as there was a heavy _clunk_ , like someone had set down some sort of machinery. _"No one will come to your rescue, you know? Now then! Time to take some photographs~! The kind that's so embarrassing you'll want to die~!"_

Ciel grunted as there was sounds of frantic, aborted movement, before he evidently was forced to still.

_"All right. Do it~!"_

I lunged to my feet, becoming seriously alarmed, as Ciel began letting out muffled but still very loud cries of genuine distress and I heard something that sounded disturbingly like clothes being forced off of him.

 _" **Please stop**!"_ Ciel managed to scream, and to my infinite relief the next sound that filtered through was the door slamming open again, and Greenhill's voice raised in a bear-like roar of anger.

_"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS, YOU LOT?!"_

The other boys cried out as I heard a series of thuds, presumably of cricket bat meeting flesh and then bodies meeting the floor, and a slight pause before Maurice whimpered.

 _"You're going to pay dearly for forcing me to break my vow of non-violence, Cole."_ Greenhill rumbled, and there was a shuffle, like someone going forward on bended knees.

 _"P-please, I beg you, Greenhill! Please don't tell Redmond…"_ Maurice sniveled, before Bluer spoke up.

_"Do you not want us to keep silent as well?"_

_"Bluer! Violet! Wh-why are you here?!"_

There was a groan and a shuffle as Ciel was evidently helped upright. _"Upon hearing the able and talented Maurice Cole's violent act, it would be odd indeed for them not to hasten here."_

_"But the Swan Gazebo is well away from the school building! They should not have been able to hear m-"_

_"Cole."_ Ciel interrupted, sounding once again firmly in control, to my relief. _"Sound is not transmitted by its amplitude, but by vibration. As long as the vibrations can be transmitted, sound can travel over any distance in theory. For example, if thin, plank or sheet-like devices are connected by taunt strings that allow vibrations to be conveyed with ease, they can become devices that transmit sound to a distant location. For example…"_

Bare feet moved across the floor, and one of the trumpets –connected by a line of taunt string that disappeared into a window of the school building– thrummed faintly as the string twitched. _"…like so."_

 _"No."_ Maurice Cole gasped as he realized, undoubtably, what all the paintings set up in the room were, paintings that I regrettably had to help Ciel set up the night before, since Sebastian was busy with the cards. _" **No**!"_

"I've heard every last word." Redmond said icily, spine stiff and posture rigidly correct as he mastered his own feelings, the rage and disgust that had similarly overcome him as we heard Maurice Cole and his goons assault Ciel.

_"Red…mond…"_

"To think _even_ you betrayed me…" the prefect continued, unswayed. My interest was piqued by the odd emphasis, before I remembered how Redmond's last fag –now deceased and the object of our investigations– had been. "I am ashamed for being such a poor judge of character." Redmond inhaled deeply. "Cole. I hereby sever my brotherly ties to you!"

Maurice Cole screamed, a high, piercing scream that descended into a muffled sob and an impact against the floor, like had fallen onto hands and knees. There was a scuff and a scrape of fabric as Ciel evidently knelt before him in a pose I remembered very well from the manga.

 _"Cole."_ he said in a kindly tone. _"If you face everyone with honesty from now on, I'm sure you'll be able to regain their trust."_

_"Phantomhive…"_

_"And to help you with that, I made certain to share your "true face" with everyone, Cole."_ Ciel continued pleasantly as, as if on cue, a brisk wind blew a shower of square black-and-white photos over the roof of the school, which fluttered down onto the grass and in the pond behind me. I snatched one out of the air, and grinned as I saw Maurice Cole, decidedly less pretty, squinting into both the camera sights and apparently a mirror as he layered on his daily makeup. Looking up, I saw what looked suspiciously like a certain black-clad butler precariously balanced on the highest spire of the school clocktowers, scattering more of those photos like leaves in the wind.

 _"You can take pride in yourself, I think."_ Ciel said sweetly. _"Your skill with makeup is the real thing."_

_***Time Skip***_

"Soooo…" I began, hands locked behind my head without a damn for my top hat as Ciel and I strolled along the paths after prying ourselves away from the prefects' congratulations. "What was with that?"

"What?"

"You freaked out, like, _seriously_ freaked out, when they did that whatever with your clothes, dude."

Slightly ahead of me on the path, I could catch Ciel's shoulders stiffening, and raised an eyebrow. This was…interesting. And not in a good way.

"I should think anyone would be disturbed at being forcefully undressed." Ciel said stiffly, his tone warning me from pushing this topic any further as I got a sick, twisty feeling in my stomach.

_Oh no. Oh please no Yana please tell me that was not included in his horrifically scarring backstory with the cult before Sebastian came in and slaughtered them._

"U-uh, yeah! Okay!" I said with as much brightness as I could force into a single word, shoulders shaking a little myself as I tried to dispel the grim mood threatening the air. "Still, it was awesome how you trapped that guy!"

I pulled Ciel into a playful headlock and ruffled his smooth short hair in what was just a fraction short of a noogie. "You're a clever little bastard, you know that?"

"Stop treating me so familiarly _at once_ , Thompson!"

"Whaaat, c'mon, we're friends, aren't we? Allies! Comrades in the ongoing pursuit of trickery and deceit!"

"Release me this instant, you madwoman!"

_There, that fixed it…I hope._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ciel actually did get raped by the cult during his forced stay there, but again, Arya would not be aware of that at this point because she has not read past the Emerald Witch arc in the manga.
> 
> Cross-Posted: February 14th, 2020, 11.48 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: January 1st, 2020, 4.20 PM USA Central Time


	52. That Butler, Grafting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is not finished at this time, however, I posted it anyways, because as I discovered while transferring the prior fic...cross-posting takes for-fucking-ever and it will be so much easier for me to transfer on a chapter-by-chapter instead of fic-by-fic basis. Ergo, this is as far as I've updated in its entirely so far.
> 
> Also, again, it's a fun little nerve-wracking dance for me writing this as Arya thinks and does things that touch upon the stuff that's happened in the series after she stopped reading it. She's all like "Man Ciel's got an issue with his power trip and whatnot" and then there's literally everything that happened in regard to his twin and its just like "Oh hun. It's not just one issue." And its an even MORE nerve-wracking dance for me to try and guess from the shots in the manga panels and the sparse amount of information given what the color and arrangement of like...everything should be in this fic. If and when this arc gets adapted into the anime I'm probably gonna have a fair bit of re-editing to do.

_Arya's POV:_

It can certainly be said that there are varying degrees of Bad Things To Wake Up To. An angry cat is certainly not good, particularly if there is an empty food dish somewhere in the house. An angry spouse, on the other hand, is significantly worse. Uninvited guests is a good one, natural disasters is another, and strapped to a table inside a flying saucer with a bunch of ominously pointy implements aimed at you by angry-looking aliens is an especially bad occurrence. Personally, my worst wakeup call to date had been an immortal magical madman with a butcher knife poised above my face kneeling above me on my bed, but that's as maybe. I'm sure there were even worse things to wake up to, including not waking up at all.

That being said, I was awoken one night about a week after Ciel had cleverly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and become the fag to the Blue House's prefect's fag by the sound of what seemed suspiciously like a large-scale explosion.

My eyes snapped open as my whole body stiffened inside the warm, heavy clasp of my cotton bedsheets, ears involuntarily straining to catch the slightest hint of a repeat of that noise. Undertaker couldn't be wreaking havoc with his scythe, could he? He and Sebastian hadn't even fought in the manga when they'd confronted him about the school murder mystery, unless you counted a brief exchange of blows that ended in a tense standoff of less than three minutes.

 _Unless he caught him early, in which case, fuck me._ I thought sourly, hearing the shifting rustle of bedclothes as the other boys in the room sat up and took notice.

"Did you hear that?"

"Sounded like an explosion!"

"Could one of the fireworks for the tournament have misfired?"

"No, I thought they weren't due to arrive for another week yet."

"Great Scott!" This came from Charles, who as I rolled over to look was standing over by our dorm room window, the very same that I had based so many midnight escapades around, staring out into the night with tense shoulders and his hand pressed against the glass. "Purple House is on fire!"

"WHAT?!"

This universal exclamation was then met with a near-universal rushing to the window to look, as I scrambled out of my bed to put on my shoes. I knew where this was going: and the new perspective gleaned from living in this world, namely that, like us, the Violet House students were actually _locked inside their dorm rooms at night after curfew_ meant that even a small fire could become extremely deadly.

"We need to go help them!" I said, slinging on my morning coat for extra protection against embers –no _way_ was I going to waste time putting on the entirety of my monkey suit– and throwing a panicked bolt of magic into my apocalypse bag as I plunged my hand inside and miraculously came up with the orange scarf Miss Nina had given me. As the others scrambled to don shoes and more clothing of their own, I wrapped it around my neck and knotted it tight enough it wouldn't fall off my shoulders. I then ran to the door to build up speed and force, before delivering a high kick that splintered the jamb and sent painful, achy aftershocks down to my knee, but did the job and broke the lock. Shoving the door open and darting out into the hall, I saw Edward frantically jamming a master key into lock after lock as more young men around my age or slightly younger spilled into the hall, alerted by Edward's rapidfire explanation upon jerking open each door, and hastened down the steps in an only slightly-discombobulated crowd.

The mob of young men rushed out in varying levels of dress –I wasn't sure whether to be disgusted or impressed that everyone else had donned their vests and ties along with their morning coats over their nightshirts, most of which were primly tucked in, and decided to settle on just pushing forwards– across the large lawn that spanned the spaces between the dorms, some of the bolder specimens deciding to forgo school tradition entirely as they pelted across the smooth lawns, though most of the groups –several more were rushing out of the darkness from the directions of Red and Blue House– stuck to the wide paths as they rushed towards the bright, flickering orange glow that feathered out into smokey grey plumes that mixed and blended with the dark night.

_Hmm._

Luckily –if one could call anything involving a fire lucky– the fire seemed to be confined to the right-hand wing of the dorms, as we rushed up in a single large mass to see the Violet Wolf House residents huddled outside their ornate iron gates, most of them in varying states of nightshirt-and-jacket, with the prefect, Violet, and his fag Cheslock and a few other upperclassmen dressed fully, undoubtably because they had been staying up late to patrol and do one last lockdown before bed. Those dressed ones were moving throughout the Purple House crowd, who had somehow clumped together in what looked suspiciously like order of age, checking off names or presences.

"VIOLET!" I heard Greenhill's distinctive bellow as the rest of the school came even and the three other prefects hurried to their companion's side. "Is everyone all right?"

Violet cast a glance at his fag and the other room captains, all of whom looked back at him and nodded.

"Yes." he muttered as I wiggled through the crowd, tugging the hood of his school cloak back up over his face. "Everyone's here."

Since I knew Ciel was likely in a position to observe the prefects –and also in a tree, if memory served correctly– I cast a glance around at the dim skyline as I burrowed out of the milling crowd of mixed dorm residents, and thought I saw a faint shadow on a murky tangled thread of what might have been tree limbs at the back of the crowd. I couldn't flip him the bird without drawing attention of the people around me, but I did glare and wrinkle my nose in a way that suggested a flipped bird would be forthcoming in his near future.

The prefects finished their huddled conversation and began barking orders as the students stopped milling about and started acting with more purpose.

"Green House! We need water here at the double, you lot!"

"Notify the masters!"

"Blue House! Top the other houses and bring water quickly!"

"Red House! Don't fall behind now!"

Suddenly, there was a subtle vibration in the packed earth underneath my feet, accompanied by heavy, muffled thumps and, oddly enough, the creaking of ropes and faint splashing of water. Sure enough, Sebastian broke out across the lawn from near the stables, riding the elephant Soma had come in on, which had a rowboat slung over each side, both of which were filled with stacks of wooden buckets brimming with water. Several dozen more of those buckets were slung over its trunk, also filled with water.

"Everyone! If it is water you seek, I have some right here!" Sebastian called sharply, as the prefects gawked.

"Mister Michaelis, sir?!" Laurence Bluer gasped incredulously as Soma perked up upon seeing his elephant. He jogged over along with the rest of the mob as buckets were distributed, but lingered as everyone plucked the trunk clean, patting the heavily-breathing elephant and praising him as Sebastian leapt off.

"Quickly extinguish the fire before it spreads!" he commanded, grabbing a bucket of his own.

"All right! Green House, follow me!" Edward said, hefting his two buckets as his in-earshot-underlings saluted.

"Yes, sir!"

"Blue House will be heading in too!" Clayton barked.

"Right!"

"STAY OUT OF PURPLE HOUSE!" Violet yelled.

There was a startled pause as Clayton turned to him. "B-but-"

"Is this truly the time to be saying such a silly thing, you fool?!" Soma barked, finishing the wordless thoughts of everyone here as he pushed through the crowd to point at Violet with the very same hand that clutched a bucket. "You! You're supposed to be the leader of Purple House, are you not?! Your worthless pride won't protect your people, you know! And if you can't protect your people, then you're a sorry excuse for a leader!"

"Why you-!" Cheslock, Violet's fag, snarled furiously as he seized Soma by the lapels of his shirt. "Who d'you think you're flapping yer gums at?!"

"Cheslock. It's fine…" Violet said placatingly, though his hand was clenched at his side. "Let's have them lend us a hand."

"…yes." Cheslock mumbled grudgingly.

"Keep your mouth covered at all times!" Edward said as he pulled a handkerchief over his face, preparing to head up the path. "Don't inhale the smoke!"

"Do not go about unwittingly opening doors! Doing so can cause the fire to flare up!" Clayton called as the students began to head up the path towards the front doors, which were beginning to emit a thick stream of white smoke.

"Those who have been injured, please come this way!" Harcourt, who had replaced Maurice Cole as Redmond's fag, said as he waved his hand above the crowd.

Cheslock ground his teeth. "I'll get you for this, you sods!" he snarled, then sucked in a deep breath. "I'll…definitely return the favor! Just you wait!"

The other fags snickered at the faux-tsundere (or would it be reverse tsundere?) display as Cheslock turned back to his own coterie and began exhorting them to not fall behind. I unknotted my scarf and plunged it into a bucket, quickly wrapping the dripping fabric around my face again –taking special care to plaster it over my mouth and nose– before grabbing selfsame bucket and plunging ahead with the crowd. There were too many disorganized elements to start a fireman's line –passing empty buckets back and full buckets ahead until the gulls ones reached the end where someone was dousing the fire and the empty ones reached a water source– and so we all were apparently going for the first lick of flames we saw and dumping our bucket on it.

Inefficient, but the fire wasn't _that_ big, and we were dousing it en mass. Hopefully, this would be enough.

As expected, there was some fuss and bother at the doors, what with those with empty buckets having to try and press back out through the crowd after they dumped their payload, but it was soon sorted out as the milling mass of students quickly spindled into a single-file line going in the doors with determination and another rushing out, dripping buckets in hand as they sprinted for the elephant. The right-hand wing wasn't entirely aflame, but there was at least one room, by my count, that was definitely up in smoke by this point, and from the thick waterfalls of smoke ascending into the night sky, multiple other rooms had caught fire, and probably at least one hallway, if the smoke rolling out of the massive double doors was any indication.

_Damn._

I thanked whatever dubious deity that had taken an interest in my life that at least all the Violet Wolf residents had gotten out of here alive and, if the shouts I had caught outside were any indication, mostly if not completely unharmed. Seeing the aftermath now in real life and real time, as I crossed the threshold and immediately saw the flickering red of fire in an adjoining hallway on the right, Ciel had taken a _serious_ moral and ethical risk in tossing that lantern into the dormitory to –quite literally– smoke out his prey.

 _What **is** it with Ciel and fire?_ I thought as I grimly plunged ahead with the hollow roar and heat of flames in my ears, eyes watering from the smoke and firmly fixed on the back of the dude in front of me. _First he did that whole thing with burning down the manor where that creep Baron Kelvin kept the kids…now this…and when we get to Sieglinde's place, they set fire to that facility too…_

Well, with the lack of proper detection sciences in this day and age, fire was a perfect way to cover your tracks. Shit happened with lanterns and candles and open flame and so on, and terrible accidents were frequent in a time period that also had a substandard fire brigade and tons of highly flammable building materials –at least by modern standards. It wasn't at all odd for things to burn down, what with all the wood and oil and cotton and other such fuel near open flames and gaslights. (Thank god electricity eventually caught on.)

So if Ciel set fire to an establishment, who was to know what had happened there? No one, that's who. It wasn't at all odd that fire seemed to be his favorite method of covering his tracks.

_Though, given as his parents died in the fire that consumed his house, and he also set fire to that cultist's place when he got out with Sebastian, I'm fairly sure a psychologist would have some pretty interesting things to say about Ciel's obsession with using flames._

I shook those thoughts out of my head as I found myself at the front of the line as the guy in front of me dumped his bucket and turned back. Damn near at the heart of the spreading fire, the heat was stifling, the stench of burning wood coated in a variety of different polishes and varnishes choking, as a rippling carpet of white-hot blossoms of flame bloomed in streaks and waves across the hallway, reaching with greedy tongues from a door on the righthand side, now completely burned away with only a few fragile, jagged cinder-shells of planks hanging on to the edges like rotten teeth.

I dumped my water on the neared outstretched lick of flame, making sure to douse it completely and soak the floorboards beneath, and went back for another bucket.

_***Time Skip***_

One sooty, ash-streaked night later, I dragged myself out of bed after a pathetic hour or so of sleep with the rest of Green House, most of whom were as baggy-eyed and sore-throated as myself. The usual clinks and sloshes of breakfast was interspersed with hacking coughs from damn near every table, as infrequent but continuous as the loudest sounds of us eating food. Even after soaking my scarf to add an extra layer of protection, I _still_ woke up with a dry, raspy throat that cup after cup of tea did little to restore, and coughed occasionally during fencing and cricket –hard, painful, throat-scouring coughs, too.

So it was in something of a vengeful mood that I headed off after Ciel during afternoon break, sleeves metaphorically rolled up and tongue heavy with words I intended to deliver, most of which were none too kind, many of which were to the general tune of "What the fuck dude?!"

Ah, but of course I wouldn't actually be allowed to make contact with him in _that_ mood. I had barely stormed up to the fence of the Blue House dorm when I felt a tug on the back of my mourning coat, which swiftly transmuted into a pull as I was yoinked straight off my feet and dragged in the wake of a calmly sauntering Sebastian Michaelis, who was walking in the opposite direction.

"Do you just have a tracer on me, you damn demonic bastard?" I groaned sullenly, not bothering to resist his grip as Sebastian pulled me along a deserted part of the grounds near the rear of the Blue House dorms and the back of my heels dragged through the dirt.

"I occasionally think it prudent." was his calm reply without looking back at me. "You are, after all, extremely young and extraordinarily clumsy, and your grasp of magic means your accidents will be disproportionally troublesome to the efforts of the young lord."

My eye twitched. "Oh, so I'm an incompetent toddler now, huh?"

"Would you prefer if I returned to treating you in the same manner as a competent, graduated member of _your_ profession?" Sebastian asked archly as he strolled around what seemed to be a garden shed.

"Doesn't said treatment of yours involve dismemberment?"

"Most usually, yes. However, you are under my master's employ, and thus safe."

"Safe or not, I think I'll pass."

"Marvelous." Sebastian said as he stopped, moved his arm out in front of himself with me in tow, and dropped me to stand directly before him, back to the wall of the small building. With a high fence and the higher wall that surrounded the school on two other sides, we were fairly well hidden from any passersby, and he offered me his usual angelic "I'm about to rip someone in two so pray it's not you" smile, closing his eyes. "Now, I understand you have some grievances to air with the young master? Please, state them all to me and I shall relay them verbatim."

I snorted and rolled my eyes, folding my arms. "Oh, _sure_ you will."

"Absolutely."

"Even if I call him a homicidal two-faced little shit?"

Sebastian's smile twitched a little. _"Especially_ in that case, Madame –aha, _Milord_ Thompson."

"Ha ha ha, I'm a boy now." I muttered, watching a smirk slide under the angelic look as Sebastian primly corrected himself. A begrudging smirk crept onto my own face as I realized one of the underlying implications of his statement. "How often do you get to insult him like that, huh?"

Sebastian's angelic grin brightened: I could practically feel the anime sparkles glinting off his teeth, glasses, and the background around him. _"Why_ , Milord Thompson, a mere servant such as I would _never_ presume to address my lord in such a fashion." he said sweetly, then affected a mournfully dutiful, apologetic expression. "Nonetheless, please endeavor to express yourself to him through me to your heart's content. Do not feel as though you must soften your language around me. I assure you, I shall communicate every word to him with the _utmost_ zeal."

 _Oh I just bet you will._ I thought with a snort and a sneaking grin.

Reminded of _why_ this conversation was happening, though, soured my mood again, and for lack of any other aggressive moves to make, since I wasn't entirely certain Sebastian would even _understand_ it if I flipped him the bird, I folded my arms tighter against my half-bound chest and glared at him. "Well, people could've fucking _died_ last night, for starters."

One immaculate black eyebrow rose. "And?"

Ah, right. Demon.

I inhaled slowly and deeply through my nose, hoping it wouldn't start up a cough again as the air tickled my raw throat. "Look, Sebastian, I get that you couldn't give less of a shit if the entire goddamn school burned down, but Ciel isn't like you, and quite frankly, he _shouldn't_ be like you."

Sebastian closed his eyes behind his glasses and shrugged carelessly. "I'm well aware of that."

"Problem is, he _is_ sort of starting to get like you. What happened last night –that was dangerous. A lot of innocent people could've been hurt."

The disguised demonic butler didn't say anything when he opened his eyes again, but from the subtly impatient expression on his face, I got the sense he neither appreciated nor cared for me lecturing him about the value of human life like a sickeningly sweet and simplified preschool commercial, and I groaned in defeat.

"Look, is it some sort of flavor boost if he's all cold and cruel and whatnot when you eat him, huh? Or do you just not give a damn about his moral decisions because you're a demon?"

Sebastian's arm suddenly slammed against the wall near my face, and I jerked sideways, paling, as he splayed his gloved hand in classic lean-over-someone-to-intimidate-or-seduce-them style on the creaking wood, looming over me as I pressed back against the wall, heart pounding. The intimidation factor was certainly _working_ –Sebastian was at least six feet and change, broad-shouldered for all his _bishounen_ slender physique, and, y'know, a _demon_. Having him all up in my personal space, with the added threat/implication of his arm right next to my head (an arm and hand I knew were easily capable of shearing through bone and flesh if he swung it hard enough, to say nothing of the transformational shadow properties of his demonic flesh) was _fucking terrifying_. Knowing him, this blatantly overt tactic was because I could technically –and that was a very, _very_ loose "technically"– affect or control him more easily than the average monkey on the sidewalk, and therefore needed to be cowed out of even thinking in such a line.

_Ah well, joke's on Sebastian. I don't even know **how** to do that._

"Miss Thompson." he said in a low, quiet voice from a mere few inches away as his elongated pupils burned into mine with a terrifying lack of emotion. "You begin to tire me. Are you here to lecture, or are you merely here because you are upset at the inconvenience the fire last night has caused you?"

_"You-"_

"You reek of soot." he interrupted coldly, red eyes shining. "Your voice is raw. You cough on merest occasion. All this will go away within a matter of days, and none at Weston are much worse injured, certainly none permanently. What cause, what _right_ have you to complain?"

"It could've been worse!" I spat.

"But it was not. My master could have ordered me to take hostage the families of the prefects to induce them to talk, for we all know that they guard the heart of the secret to Derrick's disappearance. But he has not. He could have ordered me to torture the prefects for aforesaid information, and as mere human students, you know they would talk quickly if I were the one holding the blade. But he has not. Your kind _concerns_ for his moral health are, as they say, unfounded."

I swallowed silently, gathering my nerve, and managed to muster a glare. "If the _best_ you can say of a decision is "It could be worse" then it really wasn't that good a decision." I said sourly.

Sebastian huffed softly, a smirk curling up the corners of his pale mouth.

"Power intoxicates." he said after a moment. "As a magician, you surely know that much."

I had a moment of nonplussed blinking at the sudden oblique subject shift, before years of fandom discourse over various magical characters and plots caught up with me and I "ah"ed softly.

Having direct control over Sebastian, who was basically a cheat code personified in Victorian England, would definitely be a heady rush: years of wielding that incredible power probably didn't do much to tone down Ciel's already-appreciable ego (the kid was a wicked sharp genius and he knew it, after all), and if I vaguely remembered, well, pretty much _all_ of Ciel's character interactions in the manga correctly, he wasn't exactly…accepting of other people's efforts to include him in their lives. Sadly, given as he was like _ten_ when the cult had kidnapped him and ten-year-olds, even scary smart ones, were not exactly known for their acute foresight, Ciel had probably mentally taken a step back from his own future, on the logic that he was living purely for revenge's sake and since Sebastian would, inevitably, eventually devour his soul, Ciel's own life and self weren't exactly worth much outside aforementioned vengeful purposes, and as such, there was no reason to bother cultivating ties with other people.

And because of that, Ciel was not exactly going to be susceptible to other people, y'know, trying to _reason_ with him, because no one was really close enough to do the reasoning in any way he would accept. Being a magician and whatnot, I personally could probably find a way to tie Ciel to a chair in front of a blackboard titled "Why You Should Not Be An Asshole," but I had a feeling I wouldn't get more than a few slides into that metaphorical presentation before Sebastian kicked the door down.

Then again, Sebastian had a habit of dragging his heels when Ciel was not in immediate danger of death. I might actually get all the way through it.

But combining that dangerously self-disregarding subconscious conviction and its attendant lack of people with the authority to morally reason with Ciel, with the constant power trip of holding Sebastian's leash, knowing he could get out of anything he got into with a few minutes of plotting and his demonic pawn…well, my moral fiber would start crumbling after a while too, honestly.

_Wait, is that crumble? Or is it unravel? What's the verb form for moral fiber and its dissolution?_

_There is an excessively intimidating and possibly pissed demon man right in front of you maybe focus on that._

"Not to like, step on your toes or whatever in the metaphorical soul kitchen," I began warily, raising my hands in an I-surrender gesture. "-but I'm going to at least try and pull Ciel back from the _'Everything in the world answers to me because I can make it so with my demon and uncanny intelligence'_ power trip, because eventually he _is_ going to lose at something, and he should be prepared for it. Also its majorly unhealthy for him to think like he's generally thinking right now."

Sebastian smiled angelically –and leaned away from me, removing his hand, as my lungs expanded in a _whoosh_ of relief.

"Many have tried. All have failed." he said, which was a deeply ominous statement considering how _few_ people had tried to help Ciel in that regard. Did Sebastian mean _generally_ , as in people had tried to help the souls he'd devoured in the past, or that there had been far more than what Yana had covered in her series in regards to the people surrounding Ciel and Sebastian?

I was leaning towards the first one, though that didn't exactly make me feel better.

"About the tournament arc, also," I said, figuring I might as well get this out of the way sooner rather than later. "-Ciel doesn't need my help with that, right? Because I've kinda gotten fond of Greenhill and the other cricket players and I'd rather not sabotage them if I can help it."

Sebastian raised a single black eyebrow. "Tournament arc?"

I blinked. "Yeah, I-"

_Processing prior statement._

_Oh shit._

Heat crept over my face as I turned bright red, hastily blurting out "The cricket tournament! I _meant_ the cricket tournament!"

Sebastian smirked as my face glowed with embarrassment, eyes languidly wandering over to trace aimlessly along the roof. "Tournament arc." he mused quietly to himself, mulling over the phrase as I wondered if it would be logistically feasible to grab a gardening implement or something and whack him over the head in the hopes it erased his memory of the past minute. "Can I assume this is a future term used to describe the events of a particular sporting event in a story?"

"Fuck you." I muttered, wanting to die and knowing the ordinarily-murderous-in-regards-to-myself Sebastian was not even remotely going to oblige me.

"It's amusing to note that your obsession with fictional works is so strong that you cannot differentiate between that and reality." Sebastian said, with an angelic smile, as he lazily folded his arms across his chest. Sourly, I wished that the crucifix dangling from his neck would burn his arms, but alas, no such luck.

 _"Fuck_ you!"

_***Time Skip***_

After an admittedly childish further five or so minutes of back-and-forth with Sebastian, I went along with the rest of my day, though my unease spiked again as I approached the cricket pitch later that afternoon and saw Greenhill looking suspiciously alert in my general direction. I gulped as he immediately brightened upon seeing me, and my misgivings rose with every step as the Green House prefect started walking rapidly in my direction. Frantically, I ran through the laundry list of things I might've done that would cause the prefect to have an interest in me –my talk with Sebastian had been, to most intents and appearances, a student to a Housemaster, so that was chill, I hadn't really snuck out of the dorm recently, and if that was what I was being nailed for, Greenhill probably wouldn't be looking so pleased, and it wasn't like I was going to be recruited for the cricket team in some weird Mary-Sue-esque plot centrifuge, since the Green House team _already existed_ and spent most of their time practicing together to increase their skill and teamwork, and it wasn't like I was about to be propositioned in the _other way_ , because the Victorians called homosexuality _the love that dare not speak its name_ for a _reason_ , and this was a very public pitch. Was my homework up to date? I couldn't see how or why Greenhill would grill me for that specifically, doubly not when there was sport to do right now.

I'm pretty sure, had this been an actual anime for me still, question marks would be floating above my head as nervous sweat droplets ran down my blanked-out face, but Greenhill (very rapidly!) arrived himself to lay any confused doubts of mine to rest.

"Ryan!" he said loudly, grabbing and wringing my hand in an ominously hearty handshake as my foreboding increased. "I have good news for you!"

"Uh…huh…" I said slowly, heart slowly sinking down to my leather shoes. "About what?"

"You remember Henry Mildmay St. John? The Viscount Bolingbroke?"

"Ahhh…" I blinked back, trying to jog loose the reason why that name actually _was_ familiar. Gosh darn Victorians and their arm-long titles.

_Oh shit._

"W-wasn't he one of the sluggers on our team?" I asked nervously, not liking the direction this was going in.

"Well, unfortunately, it seems he has taken sick after the fire, so-"

_Oh fuck oh no oh fuck oh no oh fuck oh no-_

"-given as you seem to be a more than adequate player-"

_-no no nO NO NO NO **NO NO** -_

"-I thought to offer you the position of replacement!" Greenhill finished proudly. "It is a great honor, especially for a transfer student such as yourself."

_FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!_

_C'mon, seriously?! **Seriously**!? What anime protagonist **bullshit** is this?!_

"Uh, a-are you sure that's a good idea?" I stammered, sweating rapidly. "I mean, I'm an American transfer, this is like a super-big British deal, its tradition," _You killed a man for tradition please **please** come with me on this one._ "-a-and I wouldn't want to like, step on any toes. Plus, I just learned to play cricket like a month ago! I'm not even that good!"

To those who wonder, no, I wasn't particularly opposed to playing cricket at the sides of my sort've-friends at Green House. Heck, I'd probably be just as excited as Greenhill, except there was one excruciatingly crucial detail that I knew and he didn't: going Green, as it were (hehe, puns) would put me in direct opposition to Ciel, who would without question be playing on the side of the Blue team.

I would be playing _opposite sides against Ciel fucking Phantomhive._

Granted, I wasn't so petty as to think something fatal would occur, or that Ciel would take this as a genuine act of betrayal. No no. He'd go at this just the same as it would be if I hadn't been popped into this reality and somehow finagled into probably-taking this nameless character's place. And hey, this was a schoolyard competition, so, well, Ciel would be using considerably tamer methods than what he'd deployed in the Murders arc.

My problem with that was that Ciel's methods would include dosing his enemies with laxatives and over-the-edge aiming-at-the-face tactics, and as I had inadvertently discovered over the course of these past few months of habituation, getting hit in the face with a cricket ball _really_ hurt. (The laxatives were of less concern, since I vaguely remembered that it was only Red House that got them and also I could just not eat anything during the matches that I didn't make myself.)

"That is of no matter!" Greenhill blustered, concern plastered all over his annoyingly honest face. "You easily imbedded yourself within the team-" _Because you play with them and I was trying to ingratiate myself with you._ "-you work well with others, you have a solidly decent slug-" _Because I practice shooting at things and daily muscle exercises._ "-and you have the natural turn of athletic spirit that we are proud to exemplify here at the Green Lion House." 

He clasped my shoulder harder, as if he could squeeze belief into me by sheer force, and I stiffened as my bandages rubbed against my chest.

"Ah, uh, yeah, sure!" I squeaked, quickly bobbing my shoulder out of his grip and backing away as I scratched the back of my head. "That's uh, great! Sounds great! I'll, uh, be there right away justletmegogetmybatI'llberightback!"

With that hasty afterthought I took to my heels, leaving a bewildered Greenhill in my wake as I bolted back towards the changing building. Every muscle-bound meathead that could swing a cricket bat were all romping about on the pitch with great vigor right now, so I was pretty safe in assuming I was alone as I darted inside and all but slammed the door shut.

I then sucked in a deep, fortifying breath, and let it out slowly as I leaned against the cool wood of the door. That had been just a bit _too_ close for my peace of mind.

While the illusion I had cast over myself completely covered every part of my body, from all angles, clothed or unclothed, it did _not_ cover the sense of touch: to again simplify things into a non-magical metaphor, I was basically wearing a hologram. I would look like a boy, walk like a boy, and due to the charm I cast on my vocal cords, I'd sound like a boy (a girly one, to be admitted, but I wasn't really sweating the details at this point), but the one thing I couldn't disguise with any amount of magic (or at least the magic currently at my command) was the fact my real body was _not_ , in any way, shaped like a boy's. (Okay, maybe I had some really nice biceps and leg muscles, but except for that, nothing.) Anyone who put their hands on or near what appeared to be my pecs would swiftly figure out via touch that I had something far different going on upstairs, although I did feel reasonably secure in the fact that no one would try to grab me between the legs (or something similar) and find out my real gender that way.

Luckily for me, my chest wasn't anything as ample as most anime females, or else I'd be having real difficulties with this charade –really all I had to do was make sure nobody brushed past my front in a crowded space, or something like what had just happened with Greenhill, wherein someone with very broad hands would attempt an encouraging/manly shoulder clasp and feel the beginning curve of my chest with the heel of their palm. Sneak hugs from behind were also rather risky, but I was usually warned of the approaching hugger beforehand by their hurried footsteps and could step aside, and besides, the proper English gentleman of this age usually did not deign to embrace his peers on a daily basis. Manly handshakes (or clapping each other on the shoulder/back if truly excited) were infinitely preferable, and although ordinarily the fragility of the heteronormative male's ego in this age was alternatively amusing and pitiful to me, in this case it made my life a heck of a lot easier. (Plus these guys were gentlemen and nobles from Victorian Great Britain, renowned the world over for being stuffy and repressed.)

In any case, just now Greenhill had been a mere slightly-tighter squeeze or shift of his wrist away from at least feeling the second layer of bandages and fabric I used to squish my chest down as much as possible, if not the beginning very-not-male swell of my breasts, but luckily, hopefully, I had managed to escape in time. If not, well, I could zap his brain with a forgetfulness spell again. I was getting the hang of those. I probably wouldn't fry him into a drooling monkey.

Probably.

Discarding thoughts of lobotomy via poor magic spells, I pushed away from the door and began searching for my bat. I had a long couple weeks ahead of me…

* * *

`Dear Sir,`

`I regret, in the strongest possible terms, to inform you that I have been selected to serve in the hothouse you so despise. Rest assured, though I shall not do anything as petty as sabotage their workings, I shall certainly not put forth my full efforts as a member of this team, as my sympathies, as always, reside entirely with you.`

`–A Fellow Gardener`

* * *

`My Friend,`

`I commend you most heartily for your honesty. Humans are such spiteful creatures, are we not? I blush to admit that even I might not act with such restraint were our positions reversed. Nonetheless, your sympathies are noted and appreciated, and may I ask, with another blush, that you perhaps ignore any oddities that may occur in your tenure at this hothouse?`

`–Your Fellow in the City`

* * *

It took some doing, particularly in regards to Nina sewing me up another of those confangled boy's costumes, but when the evening of June 3rd rolled around, I was ready with the rest of the Green Lion team to strut my stuff at the opening party.

My clanky, pauldroned, gauntleted, greaved, chest-plated, chain-mailed stuff.

And I had a sword, too. Just for more thematic appropriateness.

…yeah, so the Green Lion House's…introductory costumes?…were basically just straight-up plate armor (with a hooded mail shirt) and a green tunic with our house emblem embroidered on the front. Deeply uncomfortable for me, or at least, it would have been if Miss Nina hadn't come in clutch with a female-adjusted chestplate so I wouldn't be half-strangled to death during the festivities: so as things currently stood, with the rest of the team arrayed in a double-line behind Edward and Greenhill, I was pretty excited. Ciel hadn't promised immediate fiery retribution for my inadvertent betrayal, I got an absolutely _sick_ cosplay knight costume for future nerdery, and the complex dance of our entrance basically involved us bursting through our doors (the Weston Grand Dining Hall had four separate paneled double-doors leading into the room with each house's crest laid over the top, if you please) and marching along a red carpet to a three-step podium at the center of the room, which Greenhill would ascend and, with his fellow prefects, light a huge cup resting on said podium. Pretty simple.

"Team representatives of each house, come forth!" the Vice Headmaster, Johann Agares, said loudly from the other room as our shoulders all unanimously straightened under the heavy burden of our armor. The floor began to shake under our disciplined feet as we followed our cue amid cries of awe and surprise from the dining hall –teams, apparently, went in order of success at the last tournament, which meant that _we_ were first to march into that room at the opening statement.

(Part of me was wondering if whoever designed these costumes had gone a bit overboard, as the floor continued to shake at our absolutely robotic heavy-plated marching and the doors burst open.)

"H-here they come!"

"Their overwhelming physical prowess and teamwork are second to none!"

The enthusiastic cries of the crowd were cut off by the Vice Headmaster's commanding tones. "Absolute champions, top of the world! The Green Lions!"

The assorted students and guests all cheered until the rafters shook as we tromped our way out across the floor, me trying very hard not to sink into my armor and blush at the uproarious attention we were getting. Personally speaking, at least, I was getting a wicked case of imposter's syndrome. I was good at the sport because my tangential skills –running, shooting, reflexes– were based on the hefty desire to not die when faced with my constant lethal obstacles, not out of any desire to master the sport, and I wasn't going into this much enthusiasm (aside from watching fictional things happened), certainly not even a particle as much as all the students and sportsmen around me.

Our team did make a showing, though, I guess.

The plebeians, like me, held typical knight broadswords in a two-handed salute before our chest, staring out past the shining blades as we marched along after Edward, who carried a banner with our house emblem, as he walked behind Greenhill, who carried a flaming metal torch wrought with holly leaves wound around it, with several vines clenched in the jaws of the lion's-head wrought on the front, and had the special distinction of also wearing a cape clasped at his shoulders and an open-faced helmet with a hinged front. House Prefect rules or Team Captain rules, I wasn't sure, and since he filled both roles, its not like it mattered.

"Big brooother! You look terribly handsome!" I heard Lizzie's distinctive squeal from the crowd, and was shaken out of my discomfort enough to grin a little.

Lizzie blinked as a rose petal showered past her on a deluge of scent, and I broke discipline enough to flick my eyes to the side with a slight nonplussed smirk, seeing a fountain of the same petals spiraling outwards from the door beside ours.

"L-look! It's the second-place house that drove Green House into a corner last year!"

"Captivating spectators with their elegant plays…"

I wasn't 100% on medieval fashion, but the flat caps with plumes of feathers and ermine-lined red coats, along with the paneled gold necklaces with a pendant of the house's crest, I felt that there was a distinctly "historical aristocracy" note to whatever Redmond and the other cricket players were wearing, with the prefect carrying a three-branched candlestick with a sinuous fox curling over the middle base of one of its lit tapers and Joanne Harcourt behind him carrying the house banner. The others, like us, also carried tokens of their own, but unlike us, the other members of the Red House team carried…roses. They were all deadass carrying long-stemmed red roses, which they flourished (elegantly!) at the crowd.

"Brilliant Eden, a garden of fine plays! The Scarlet Foxes!"

Squeals resounded through the room from nearly every unattached female in radius as I rolled my eyes a little, shaking my head as I returned my focused to our ordered marching towards the podium.

We had adjusted our pace, subtly, so that Red House (and presumably all the other houses) could reach the podium on time, so we were barely halfway there when suddenly, somehow, every light in the room aside from Greenhill's torch and Redmond's candelabra went out –and I mean _every_ light, which was both impressive and disturbing considering that it was probably hundreds of individual candles both arranged in two-tier candelabrums on the ground and chandeliers _over twenty feet above our heads_ , plus about a dozen dished braziers hung on the walls midway between the two.

We were not left to suffer in mostly-utter darkness for long though, as a dozen foxfire-like flames slowly bloomed in the pitchy black shade on the other side of the room, amid much shivering and quiet shaking from the other house denizens.

"C-could this be…the house team they say throws their opponents into confusion with their unpredictably tricky plays?"

The lights balled up and coalesced to flicker along the gnarl-headed staffs –which was apparently what Violet House residents got instead of roses or swords– of the Violet House team, all of which were clustered several meters away from their opening door, including Violet, who was in the lead with _the most_ boss lantern I had ever seen, a spidery black confection of metal and glass swinging from _the closed jaws of a wolf skull_ , which had some of its earthly shape returned to it the form of a painted design on its forehead that branched into two pointed ears of black lace and fabric, from which dangled shimmering, clattering strings of jet beads. This whole apparatus was mounted on yet another staff, and it swung carelessly as Violet shuffled forward, followed by the rest of his team in deep hooded robes of ominous purple.

"The swarming specters of the ghost legion! The Violet Wolves!"

Shrieks resounded through the room at their unexpected style and place of entry as the lights, somehow, flickered to life again, while I quietly fumed at the lost opportunity to have one of those sweet robes and that absolute _genius piece_ of a lantern.

_Well I know what I'm making when I get back to a place with modern materials._

My devious prop designs were interrupted by the high whistle of some kind of bird, and I looked up with surprise, and some trepidation, to see a flock of owls circling above the audience, who were similarly (nervously) transfixed.

"Those birds are…"

 _"That_ house, is it?"

"Though their physical strength leaves much to be desired, they aim for an opportunity to win the championship with their strategic game plans."

Perhaps it was the ominously unenthusiastic announcement, but I could swear even the door on the opposite side of the room creaked open timidly rather than ominously like the Violet Wolves beside them, and an owl winged its way down to land on Lawrence Bluer's crooked and outstretched arm, while he used his other to carry another lantern dangling on a short pole. This had a miniature owl outstretched in flight on the top, which, not gonna lie, was neat, but not as neat as a fucking _wolf's skull_. (Hopefully humanely killed, but since wolves were probably extinct in Britain at this point in history, I actually did have a reasonable chance of hoping.)

"Attack of the cornered rats, God only knows. The Sapphire Owls!"

There was almost dead silence, broken only by fairly unenthusiastic but rigidly polite Victorian clapping all around (even from their own house members, ouch), and I winced in sympathy.

"KYAAAH! CIEL, YOU LOOK ABSOLUTELY CHARMING! GIVE IT YOUR BEEEEEST!" Lizzie cried at maximum volume, waving her hand frantically at the red-faced earl as the rest of the room murmured or coughed in barely-polite awkwardness.

I tried to wipe an insubordinate smirk off my face, but was only moderately successful as all four teams reached the pedestal in perfect unison and paused, as the prefects took the lead and solemnly ascended the steps with their various on-fire props.

"Now light the flame of Saint George!" Vice Headmaster Agares cried loudly from his place on a lectern near the head of the hall, and Greenhill extended his torch, Redmond his candelabra, and the others their lanterns towards the apparently-primed kindling on the surface of the wide and deep cup.

"We, the players…" Greenhill began.

"…in accordance with the great tradition of Weston College…" Bluer continued.

"…shall fight fair and square until the very end." said Redmond.

"This we do solemnly swear." Violet finished, and the large cup/torch went up with a satisfying _whoosh_ of flames, and the crowd erupted into its most enthusiastic cheering yet as the prefects swiveled and marched back to their teams.

"Now, I do hereby declare open the Interhouse Cricket Tournament of 1889!" Vice Headmaster Agares shouted as the entire gathering in the Grand Dining Hall roared with one, extremely enthusiastic, voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: February 15th, 2020, 12.13 AM, USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: February 3rd, 2020, 7.43 PM USA Central Time


	53. That Butler, Weeding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Running over the manga during this chapter has just alerted me to the fact that I've been spelling Bluer's name wrong this entire time. Whoops. I've already committed to this error and fuck it if all the prefect's last names aren't just color references anyways so Imma just gonna leave that one there. 
> 
> Also, apologies for any cricket inaccuracies here, for as Yana mentions in the seventeenth volume, its really hard to learn a sport through books and there's honestly a limit to how much you can understand it without playing or watching it live.

_Arya's POV:_

The following morning, after the party in which I had indulged myself with copious amounts of delicious high-end Victorian food (and very awkwardly danced with a few ladies), I actually went into the stadium for our match against the Violet Wolves with a fair bit of enthusiasm, for two reasons.

One, since Ciel was going to be facing the winner either way and I knew he had adjusted for this, our match right here was going to be the only "clean" one of my day, even if I didn't actively cheat myself. For one thing, I knew one of Ciel's enticements for the Green Lion House (and probably Violet Wolves, if they managed by some astronomical chance to beat us) involved Lau and his "brazen harem of women," to quote the manga, and I, well…wasn't going to be floored by the visual of a woman's leg, or even the multiple legs of multiple shapely women. Call it a lack of lesbianism or a surplus of skin exposure in my time, but that just wasn't going to do it for me.

So, to keep in line with Ciel's plot and honestly my own cover, the most "cheating" I would have to do would be to fake discomposure over Lau's half of the scheme, and then continue playing while basically just ignoring Ciel's increasingly blatant cheating and/or underhanded tactics. There would be an undercurrent of frisson and performance anxiety there, one I was keen to –and able to– avoid here, in this match, when it would simply be me and some other Victorian mooks playing ball against a kooky house of spooky fellow youths. For all the pomp and circumstance surrounding this, not to mention the high stakes that would come into play later when it was us versus Ciel striving for an invitation to the Midnight Tea Party, this, right here, was just an over-glorified children's game.

 _Speaking of which…_ I thought as we lined up facing Violet House's team on the dusty earth of the cricket pitch itself, my eyes sliding over their near-identical uniforms (with the minor switch of purple instead of green piping around the white cricket uniforms and their own house crest emblazoned underneath the right lapel) without really seeing them. _Doesn't Lau set up a betting table later on?_

I might have to get in on that action. While Ciel was indeed paying me an honestly generous and extremely liveable wage by Victorian standards, especially when he also paid for my room and board, most of those funds went towards buying more magic books, stationary, or chalk as I continued working to get home. Honestly, I had no idea what the current value of the money I had stashed in my apocalypse bag would even be, other than "a lot," but it never, ever hurt to have more money. Plus, I had a rare and ironclad advantage on betting here, since, barring butterfly effects caused by my very self, I knew _exactly_ how every last bit of this was going to play out.

I mentally bumped that "visiting Lau's betting table" up from a "maybe" to a hard "probably."

 _"The second match of the Interhouse Cricket Tournament, the Green Lions of Green House vs. the Violet Wolves of Purple House, will now begin!"_ an announcer roared through a megaphone up somewhere in the stands, and my eyebrow twitched, impressed, as I looked up and saw the lack of speakers. Drowning out the enthusiastically-cheering crowd with only a megaphone and some moxie…not bad. Poor dude was probably going to need a honey-laced drink after this, though.

I twisted my head from side to side, cracking my neck, as smacktalk broke out on all sides of me, lacing my fingers together and stretching my hands out to crack them as well. As previously stated, I wasn't near invested enough in the outcome of this game to bother with all that inter-house rivalry stuff, and in any case, witty comebacks without profanity were not my forte. And I had a feeling a number of my erstwhile companions (and heck, maybe even some of our less eccentric rivals) would look at me more than a little askance if I threw out something to the tune of "Tough talk coming from a witch bitch" or even something as tame as "You fucking _wish."_

Ah, linguistic gaps. How utterly confusing and aggravating thou art.

A man in a suit and flat straw boating hat who was, apparently, our umpire/referee, stood at the head of our combined lines and, with great ceremony, popped a glittering silver coin into the air. He knelt on the ground to inspect it as the coin landed, before straightening.

"Green House fields first! Purple House, change into your vests. In this tournament, each match will consist of two innings of twenty overs maximum!"

Since my unfortunate indoctrination into the world of sports, I'd learned far more about cricket than, quite frankly, I had ever _wanted_ to know to begin with, so I was easily able to remove my fancier outer jacket and leave myself with the open-collar white shirt and belted pants alongside the others as I confidently took my place on the field. Though I had never really understood what Bardroy meant in the manga by saying cricket was "like baseball," having to physically go through the motions myself had elucidated things quite nicely.

Currently we, Green House, would have a man (thankfully not me for any time soon) on the left of one of the Purple House batsmen, pitching across to the other batsman, who would, in theory, either hit the ball or miss and have the ball knock over the wickets (the stick-rattle-things set up at either end of the pitch) behind him. If the wickets were downed, the batsman was out and another one took his place. If he hit the ball and it was caught before it touched the ground, he was also out, and again, another Purple House batsman would replace him.

However, if the ball was hit _successfully_ , one of four things would happen.

One, a successful hit would allow the two Violet Wolves batsmen to run between their creases (those chalked or carved lines by the wickets), earning themselves one run, or one point.

Two, a semi-successful hit would have them running back and forth, but if we, the Green House outfielders, caught the ball and hucked it back in time to knock over a wicket before one of the batsmen reached it, the batsman running for it would be out as well.

Three, a very successful hit, after bouncing, would have the ball touch or cross the circular boundary line a fair distance out from our rectangular pitch, earning the batting team –at the moment, Violet Wolf– four runs, or four points.

Four, the _most_ successful hit, a ball that was sent all the way over the boundary line without touching the ground once would earn the batting team what basically equated to a home run, or rather, six runs, aka six points.

Hence, the similarities to baseball becoming clear: the end goal being that beautifully untouchable hit, a boundary six/home run, that would allow the players the maximum number of points as they ran to their wickets/bases, the outfielders gathered around the pitch to intercept a batted ball and chuck it back to tag a batting player out, the wicket-keeper/umpire behind the batter to catch missed balls, and so on.

The Violet Wolves were known to be a tricky, unpredictable bunch, so with the ten players not currently pitching, we were scattered in a fairly loose systematic radius around the ball's direction of travel, ensuring, hopefully, that we would be able to catch whatever the Violet Wolves pitched no matter which way they hit it. Since for some incomprehensible reason, the first team at bat _had_ to don sweatervests (in house colors, of course, because Weston College), there was a bit of a pause before the other team returned to the pitch, a pause in which I had time to exhale slowly and wipe the first telltale hints of sweat from my face. All in white I may be, but it was early June and I _was_ in a slightly-stressful "there-are-hundreds-of-people-watching-me-and-they-will-loudly-announce-and-react-to-every-mistake-I-make"-type situation.

Hoo boy. Sports were rapidly becoming a lot less fun when I had an audience.

In any case, thankfully, I was one of ten faceless(ish) minions out on the playing field, ready to dart after a struck ball like hounds on a fox, so some of the pressure was lightened by crowd psychology. I was already shaking a little at the thought of taking my place as a batsman ("man"), and it wasn't because of the necessary protection implied by the thick leather gloves and shin guards, which, to be quite frank, honestly looked more like armor than sports padding. But hey, there'd be another batsman for the crowd to focus on, unless I was the one batting, and _forget_ pitching –thankfully, by common strategic consensus, I was the rookie new kid, not to be taken off-bench (in the sense of being anywhere in the creases) unless it really was necessary, which it almost certainly eventually would be due to how the game worked. By lucky chance, since the games today were restricted to two innings, and one inning was ten outs, or rather, ten dismissals of players for a caught/bowled ball, if we really laid into the Violet Wolves (I was looking at Greenhill, here) I may or may not be able to avoid being in the real hot seat (solo pitching) entirely.

Not that I had anything against any specific part of the game in the ordinary way, but yeah. Whole stadium ready to scream at me if I fucked up, my fellow players included. I didn't subscribe to social anxiety, thank goodness, but, well, there were some things that could quell _any_ soul that wasn't baptized in the competitive fires of a sportsy spirit. For me, an announcer booming out the words _"OH, AND IT APPEARS THOMPSON HAS CHOKED AT THE PRESSURE POINT!"_ or some variation thereof as the entire stadium booed their fury and disappointment was _quite_ enough to make my heart pound and my palms feel sweaty even just in concept.

Thankfully, the game was proceeding outside of my nervous shakings as one of the non-named Green Lion players in the manga –I thought his name was Reginald, but wasn't 100% on that since I honestly didn't pay much attention to that in our practices– who was standing behind the second batsman wound up and threw, and the batting Violet House player –they looked fairly well alike, in the sense that they all tried to be as individualistic as possible with a profusion of wild hairstyles and streaky colors therein, as well as subtly tanned complexions from their long times rambling about trying to commune with nature or take inspiration from the same– swung hard for the oncoming ball.

There was a nasty _crack_ of padded leather meeting the paddle of varnished and hardened wood, and I glanced up as the ball was sent flying over our heads –to my right. Far right, with at least two people between me and the ball's trajectory, so it wasn't worth running for on my part. Instead, I settled my feet more firmly inside their leather cricket shoes and solidified my stance, waiting for a ball to be tossed my way by fellow players or by another whack of the cricket bat.

"Violet House, four runs!"

 _Hrm._ I thought as I wiped another dampening of sweat from my forehead. _Not a good omen for us winning the game._

Given as a lot of Ciel's strategy seemed to be founded upon dealing with Green House in the final, I set my jaw and resolved to fight with everything I had, for these few innings at least. Disregarding the very real chance that my presence instead of the usual player could tip the scales one way or another, we _were_ fucking winning this.

_***Time Skip***_

I hastily swallowed down a cup of tea from the Green House refreshment table by our changing building, the post-two-hour break for teatime having commenced. We were, quite honestly, hammering the Violet Wolves, who despite such diabolical tricks as spinning balls, disorienting flares of cricket bats, and shifty arrangements of outfielders, were flagging badly. Our defense was too tight: hitting a ball anything short of the boundary line meant it was almost always caught by one of our runners, myself included, who had earned a skinned elbow even despite my white polo shirt when I'd all but nosedived and, had the grass been a modicum more slippery, almost belly-slid across the ground to catch a fly ball.

Being as I needed to dart across to the other cricket stadium, aka across a football field's worth of space through a winding, twisty scenic path, I didn't have time to indulge in this short break of rest with the others: if I remembered correctly, Lau had his betting table over by the Scarlet Foxes and the Sapphire Owls, and I would probably need to do some rummaging around to find it.

Since the promised tea break was only twenty minutes, I needed to move and have my cash in hand. Luckily, there was a five-pound note in my jacket pocket –my _actual_ jacket pocket, back in the changing building. I just had to sidle in –which I did– and grab it out –which I'd done– and now it was up to me to slink off again and run for it across the grounds.

Setting the cup down again, I managed to extract myself from the hearty chatter of the rest of the team, sneak over to the edge of the stadium, and pop out of one of the servant's entrances I had found in my prior rambles, before casting a hasty glance around and sprinting across the grounds for the clamor and excitement of the other stadium.

Arriving slightly winded and sweatier than ever, I self-consciously pulled in the lapels of my cricket uniform, trying to hide the incriminating green piping, as I wiggled through the crowd, looking for a booth with a lot of shouting betters waving slips of paper around. Betting not being the most gentlemanly of pastimes, I doubted my presence, if registered by other Weston students, would be welcomed or allowed to go without a rousing hue and cry of outrage. Possibly even punishment, too, which would certainly complicate the plot of things going forward.

Since I also knew Undertaker would be on-base, as it were, I didn't even dare to cast a subtle distraction or illusion beyond the one I was already wearing, trusting in the focus of everyone else in their dark greys and charcoal suits on the games and whatnot to not notice the singular bright white speck of fabric that was me.

"Hrrrrm…" I whimpered, ducking my head and forging onwards and hoping I wouldn't regret it any time soon.

Familiar shouting met my ear, mixed with the excited calls of numerous other men.

"Give me a red card!"

"Aww, my good man. Going with the sure bet, I see!"

"Red for me as well!"

"Give me one over here too!"

"Yes, yes. Be right with yoou~! Come, come! These festivities are held only once a year! Aren't there any gallant hearts who'll put their money on Blue House, the long shot~?"

I popped through the crowd, gasping, and held up my five as I bent over to breathe, my other hand bracing on my knees to hold myself up.

"Fiver on Blue House." I wheezed, and the paper was instantly snatched from my hands before I could blink, making my look up in surprise to see a Chinese girl with an eerily bright smile and her hair in two covered buns holding my money.

"You sure?" she chirped. "108 to 4 betting odds, Red favor! Noooo taking it back!"

I raised an eyebrow and grinned a little, trying to exhibit an aura of confidence and control when I was shining with sweat and gasping from my frantic run.

"I meant what I said and said what I meant, ma'am." I raised my empty hand, palm-up. "Gimme gimme."

Her perky grin widened, and she ripped off a tab from the pink reel and handed it to me. "Come back after the match to collect your winnings, or pay out your debt!" she trilled, and turned to entice another avid gambler. Lau (and his entourage) were milking this crowd for all they could get, probably in no small part because Lau, like me, knew _Ciel_ was on the field and therefore –if the pun could be pardoned– all bets were off. There was, after all, no greater bet for an unscrupulous house to spin than a sucker bet.

I stuffed the tab deep in my pocket and ran for the Green House match again.

_***Time Skip***_

Boisterous cheering roared across the field as we hit the fourth over in the second inning of the Green Lions versus Violet Wolves match. We were ahead of the Violet Wolves by about fifty points –being in the bottom of the ninth, as it were, this meant that the game could still go either way depending on who bowled and if we, Green House, could keep our batsmen up and hitting sixes (or fours). The Violet Wolves, however, could close that gap if they knocked enough of us out of batting, so there was still a fair amount of tension in the air, and competitive glares all around.

Me? I was just happy I hadn't yet disgraced myself on the field and managed to hit mostly fours with an occasional six on the rare occasions I had to be put up to bat.

But anyways. Tensions high. Cheslock, the fag to Violet –who was doing something with his shoe way off behind Cheslock in the dead zone– was bowling, and from the smirk on his face and the ominously deft way he was rolling the ball around in his hand, things did not look good for our batsman…which thankfully, wasn't me.

"Go, Green House!"

"Crush them, Purple House!"

As students from both houses –and a fair amount of parents and alumni, if I wasn't mistaken– bellowed their encouragement from the stands, Cheslock smirked and lowered his arm. "Dull bowls are just not my style. Here I go!" he sneered, and then whipped his bowling arm out and back, sinking down as his leg skidded out in a rough half-circle that had dust billowing up. "Give us a fancy dance, you macho meatheads!"

I was somewhat disappointed I couldn't see this in anime format, as I _knew_ there would definitely be embellishments worth watching. If I remember correctly, the manga panel involved flames?

 _"Rushing Violet Vapor, Purple Burnout!"_ Cheslock cried, pitching the ball fast and hard as it soared towards the batsman. It was a low ball, and our man aimed low, but when the leather cricket ball actually _hit_ the ground, it suddenly darted forward like it had been yanked by a string, zooming past the batsman and sending our wickets flying.

 _"Bowled!"_ the announcer cried as murmurs broke out from the students by the rails.

"What's the story with that low bowling form and sudden acceleration?!"

 _If I remember correctly,_ I thought as I shuffled a little on the bench to make room for the returning batsman as our next guy got up, _it's something to do with a topspin on the ball._

Not illegal, but also difficult to do, so there was that. Thankfully, Greenhill was ahead of me on the bench, so by any standard of things, this should soon be over. If they bowled him, even with that super-ball, I would eat my betting ticket.

"Say Violet, what do you think of my-" Cheslock began proudly as he turned, only to splutter as he saw Violet was not so much as facing the pitch, instead crouching on the ground and pulling weeds(?) as he remained oblivious to the world around him. _"You weren't even watching?!"_

I sweatdropped as Cheslock waved the arm of his pointing hand at the prefect, demanding that he "at least try to be involved here," before turning around irritably to chuck another Purple Burnout at us as another batsman took the metaphorical plat.

 _"Bowled again!"_ the announcer roared as, predictably, our guy still missed and the ball decimated the wickets once more. _"Is even Green House helpless against him!?"_

Edward scoffed from slightly further down the bench, and Greenhill stood up.

His first hit absolutely clobbered the ball irrespective of Cheslock's tricky pitching –the ball could have as much topspin as it wanted: when hit at _that_ velocity, and undoubtedly with the subtle angle adjustments Greenhill had made to counterattack the errant spinning backlash, it had absolutely no choice but to go flying almost straight up in the air as it rocketed off to the very outskirts of the field.

The crowd roared approval, a deafening volume that was by no means unrelated to the many, many, extremely loud Green House members with lungs of iron and the air capacity of a well-heated blimp.

 _"A six!"_ the announcer cried excitedly. _"That's Greenhill for you! The man known as the best cricketer in the history of this school!"_

"Kuh!" Cheslock gasped, flinching back. "Dash you, boss monkey!"

I tilted my head back to raise an eyebrow up at the announcer, however.

_Sure, I knew he was good and all, and he fulfilled the cutout prop characteristics for an anime character in his position and appearance and whatnot, and there was that whole line about-_

"There's no such thing as a ball I can't hit!"

_-yes, thank you Greenhill, but the **best** cricketer in the school, ever? This place is hundreds of years old, right?_

_Damn, man._

After that, sadly for Violet House, it went pretty fast. Cheslock went down after his perquisite last four bowls without so much making a dent in Greenhill's six-scoring streak, and no one could touch him after that as Greenhill whacked ball after ball off into the far distance, much as he had done on the practice field when he'd left his somewhat effeminate-looking partner to scramble after them time and time again when there was no one obliging around where they landed.

Cozening was not for the faint of heart and weak of track skills.

"Amazing!" bellowed the announcer. "Greenhill is unstoppable! When'll he quit hitting the ball?!"

I could almost hear the whistle and see the cartoonish glint of air as the very last ball soared over the stands and the crowd –the parts that weren't supporting Violet House, anyways– screamed and cheered their approval as we were left 213 points to Violet House's measly 120.

"The victory goes to the Green Lions!" the announcer boomed, as if there was any other possible conclusion with that points spread, and the crowd continued to cheer vigorously as the rest of our team went out to congratulate a sweaty Greenhill.

"That was practically a whitewash!" Edward said smugly as he faced his prefect, who had a complacently pleased look on his face.

"Of course." he agreed, then blinked and looked over at Violet some distance away near the stands, who was scuffing his shoe against the grass again. "Nn? Violet, what are you doing?" he asked as he stepped over. "Now that the match is over, it's time to shake hands."

"I'm done." Violet sighed as he stopped moving with one last sideways scrape. "Don't step on it, okay?" he added, bringing Greenhill up short as he almost stepped onto a massive crop circle (lawn circle? grass circle?) of Violet Wolf House's emblem that Violet had, apparently, been spending this whole match working on carving out of the field.

"Wha-?!" Greenhill spluttered. _"Now look here you!_ Take this more seriously!"

_***Time Skip***_

Thankfully, there was a much longer break, presumably for players on both sides to catch their breath, as we went into the final match, so I had enough time to snag my morning jacket –which at least _helped_ disguise the fact I was one of the cricket players– and saunter, rather than sprint, back over to Lau's betting table. It was much more crowded, possibly because of the unexpected upset with the Red vs Blue House game, possibly because word had simply gotten around that it was here, and I had to employ hearty use of my elbows, as well as hold my arms close to my chest, to bully my way through the crowd and avoid anyone figuring out by touch that my chest was squishy and curved outwards. The pushing around here was like chickens at feeding time, and much more rabid than any other Victorian gathering I had seen thus far.

And that _included_ a terrified populace fleeing from basically-zombies.

But I managed, and I waved my pink tab at one of Lau's…assistants?…as she took it, raised one immaculately-groomed eyebrow, and then grinned cheerily, turning to fish out my winnings from a leather suitca-

Oh.

Oh my.

Even for Victorian England, that was a _lot_ of bills.

"You paid five, on 108 to four odds, you get £135 back!" she chirped, seeing, my stunned half-disbelieving expression as she handed me the money, and her sparkly, inviting grin grew wider. "Want to bet again? 150 to one odds, Green House favor!"

I swallowed hard, then looked up and grinned, even daring to fan the bills playfully like I'd seen it done in movies.

"Put it all on Blue House."

"All 135?"

"Yup. Maybe I'll be lucky again, yeah? Always good to bet on the dark horse!"

"Yuppie!" she cheered, snatching the bills back out of my hand and exchanging them for another pink slip. "Come back after the game! Hope you don't lose~!"

_Oh, I **will** though. And by losing, not to be too pretentious, I will gain my victory!_

_…I wonder how much money my winnings would be in modern terms?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: NA  
> Originally Posted: February 28th, 2020, 9.48 PM USA Central Time


	54. That Butler, Pruning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arya's currently unable to know this, but her final winnings come out to about 2,649,359.55 British pounds, which is 3,250,202.83 USD, in modern currency. That is a LOT of money holy crap. (She'll be spending most of it over the course of her nonsense but still, damn.)

_Arya's POV:_

Pink betting stub tucked away inside my morning coat in the changing…building, I was free to snag a quick cup of tea before the next match started. Playing all day, even in these bright white uniforms, was somewhat punishing in the bright June sun, so combining that with all the running around I had been doing left me somewhat deprived of liquids. Even a piping hot cup of tea, not exactly one's first choice of beverage when already sweating freely, was a welcome chance to rehydrate. I also had a chance to try the famed English tea sandwiches, which were being served alongside the tea, as any _other_ opportunities to do so –namely with Ciel– had been somewhat lacking, as he did not deign to dine with someone who was technically his inferior, in terms of being his hired help. The school didn't serve them either, which had left me deprived of this classic dish until now.

Personally? Bit overhyped.

Sure, they'd chopped up the sandwich contents so it was easier to eat in small, well-mannered bites without fear of something sliding out, and sliced them into triangles with the crusts cut off, which was nice, and elegant, but they also put straight-up cucumbers in some of them as the main filling and I did not trust like that. I stuck with the egg and chicken, which was safer, and the salmon, which was yummy.

_…am I turning into that Haruhi chick from Ouran High School Host Club? 'Ooh tuna' and 'damn rich people' and all that…?_

Shaking such character allusions and absorptions aside, I nommed my sandwich and, much in the manner of a soldier about to be tossed out of an airplane into a live battle zone, decided to enjoy what time I had left before the inevitable. Looking at the members of the Blue team gathered across the pitch at their own tables and lawn chairs, I could practically _sense_ the malignant cloud of Ciel's evilly plotting aura from all the way across the pitch.

Okay, maybe that was just me. Most of the Blue players seemed pretty down, probably because they didn't actually _believe_ Ciel's reassurances that they would win no matter _how_ much they'd planned…which made it a little bit odd in comparison that I, on the opposing team, was so very sure of their victory.

Ah, well.

Tea and ensuing dainties dutifully eaten, we brushed ourselves off and marched across the field, taking our places along with the Blue team. A gentle, warm summer breeze blew across the field, tugging at the hems of our white cricket uniforms and bringing with it the smell of grass and a tiny hint of flowers. Part of me was sad that I was busy doing "work" on such a nice day, the rest of me was cheerful that after the Weston arc and all that was done I could go boating on the Thames or whatever the hell else I wanted during a weekend off.

If Ciel _gave_ me a weekend off…

Speaking of which, I glanced down the row of Sapphire Owl players and saw him about three down from the head of the line, looking quietly confident, unlike many of the Blue players, who were masking trepidation with trembling stoic masks. To my amusement, Ciel was just about the only player on his side without glasses, whereas Edward and I were just about the only Green players whose shirts weren't strained by the bulging muscles underneath. I half expected our people to break formation at any moment and give the Sapphire Owls a collective headlock and/or wedgie.

 _"The final match, the Sapphire Owls vs the Green Lions, will now begin!"_ the announcer called, and about fifty seconds later, Lizzie's piercing voice echoed across the field.

"CIEEEL! DO YOUR BEEEST!"

Next to Greenhill, Edward started and spluttered indignantly. "Ngah! Lizzie!"

"That attitude is unbecoming, Midford." Greenhill said, expression wooden.

The prefect's fag ground his teeth audibly as he turned down the line to glare at Ciel. "We'll give you a thorough thrashing!"

"…do go easy on us." Ciel muttered as a line of sweat slid down his jaw. I noticed he was wearing a different eyepatch than normal: when going about his life as a student these past few weeks, he'd been wearing the white gauze square with four separate strings tied under his ears, and at the party the night before, the same sleek black one he wore as an earl, and now, it was a sturdy leather job with two small brass buckles glinting on either side of the patch itself. Smart of him: that eyepatch looked like it could take a beating, and not like I _planned_ to hit Ciel (or anyone else, for that matter) in the face, but, well, accidents happened on all sides of the pitch, some of which actually _were_ pure accident and not the diabolical machinations of a certain earl.

Lord only knew what would happen if that patch slipped off in the middle of the game and everyone and their auntie in England's upper crust saw Ciel Phantomhive had a Faustian contract tattooed on his right eyeball. I mean, sure, it wasn't like everyone –or maybe anyone except me– actually _knew_ what the contract was, but. Well. Pentagram, mystic sigils, the sheer impossibility of tattooing an eye –it did not take a genius in Victorian times to figure out that sigil on Ciel's eye was probably demonic in origin.

 _Although…can Sebastian wipe memories? I think I saw a thread somewhere about his making a deal with Ciel that suggested he could at least manipulate them…or was it just the memories of his contractor as a condition of the contract? Dang it._

"We'll come at you with everything we've got." Greenhill said, breaking me out of my brief irrelevant tangent.

"We are honored." Lawrence Bluer replied formally.

The coin was flipped, the Blue players declared to be first at bat, at which point they changed into their sweater vests and we took the field, ready to catch any balls. I clenched and unclenched my hands a few times, shifting from foot to foot, trying to ease the tension in my body. Sure, I knew Ciel was going to win barring any weird butterfly effects, but the fact was I had to be a pulling jockey, as it were, without actually alerting my teammates or the general field that I was deliberately holding back. How far was too much? What was not enough? It was a ticklish line to tread, and I knew the rapid changeover in this match would ensure, almost certainly, that I would be both batting and pitching at some point.

At least some of the pressure was taken off by the fact this wasn't my first game.

Not to say I wasn't nervous, so. Hand exercises. Yeah.

"Play!" the announcer shouted, and halfway across the pitch, near the stands, I saw a knot of what seemed to be students with instruments, accompanied by a certain tall figure draped in black.

_Oh my god._

Sebastian turned to his makeshift band and tapped his conductor's wand against the podium –I was too far away to make out details, but I definitely recognized that movement of the elbow from cartoons– before raising it. A bright, bouncy sort of music –lots of piping trumpets and the sort of high-stepping rhythm you got with marching bands– floated across the field, as a dude I vaguely remembered went by the name of Heinz wound up for the first pitch.

"Here we go!" he shouted, throwing hard and fast as his opponent, a weedy-looking brunet a year or two younger than me with round glasses, squeaked –actually _squeaked_ – in terror, frantically throwing up a defense as he clumsily swung his bat around –and hit, sending the ball flying over Heinz's shoulder and rocketing off for a four-run bat as incredulous cheers washed over the pitch.

"That was pure luck! Pull yourself together!" Greenhill called, and Heinz scowled as he grabbed his next ball.

"Right!"

He wound up, pitched, and to our collective shock (minus me, of course) the Sapphire Owl player managed to hit again, scoring three more runs before the startled Greens managed to grab the ball and get him out. The Sapphire Owl player was then replaced by the Clayton guy I vaguely remembered was Ciel's prefect's fag, who took his place with a decidedly calmer demeanor and swung his bat a few times, as if getting ready.

It took me a hot minute to get the hang of the trick as the Sapphire Owls continued miraculously successful bat after bat, but there was a rather obvious clue in the music. Cricket matches didn't get music at this point in history, and there was no way in the fresh hell Sebastian would simply _casually_ start up a garden orchestra, just because. The fact that his startlingly out-of-character penchant for classical music coincided with Ciel's cricket match –well, no coincidences were _that_ convenient.

So, the music was there for a reason. What use did music serve, especially in regards to cheating? Probably a cue. Or maybe a series of cues. Same difference. Or maybe it was to disguise another noise serving as a cue…

Eh, whatever.

So…music as cues or disguising cues. Cues serving for what?

It took another minute or so for observing the batting Sapphire Owls, but eventually I noticed something. Their actual swings, as they moved the cricket bats, were pathetic, sloppy and uncoordinated. But they still _hit_ , and because we of Green House were pitching so hard, those ricochets grabbed a lot of air. So, the way those wild swings were suspiciously well-timed and _always_ hit just right…

So, cues to hit the ball right, cues that were probably timed to the swings…

Granted, I wasn't really all that into music, and it wasn't like I actually _knew_ what march or ragtime or whatever it was being played, but there was something just a little bit… _off_ about it, when I started to focus on the notes. Not too much, not too noticeable unless you were really paying attention, but there was a faint, occasional jangle in the rhythm, a jarring extra bit in the bars, and when I widened my attention, those extra notes coincided perfectly with the errant but still somehow accurate swings of the Blue House players.

_Hmm._

Standing off on my right, Edward Midford suddenly gasped and whipped around, looking towards the band. I was impressed he managed to figure it out without meta cues like me, never mind so fast.

"Now I get it…" he murmured, and several meters off on _his_ right, Greenhill nodded.

"So you picked up on it too?" he said, before a sparkle glinted off his brow. "They…worked really hard!"

"Its true. I can't condone their using music, but- EH?!" Edward spluttered as he realized midsentence that the true context had passed Greenhill completely.

"Nn?" Greenhill blinked as his fag looked at him incredulously.

 _This man trusts people too much…_ Edward and I thought simultaneously, though my perspective was decidedly more smug.

Edward inhaled slowly. "Greenhill. Will you let me bowl next?" he asked after a moment.

_Uh-oh._

I glanced up at the scoreboard as a kid on a stepladder chalked out a 40 on the Blue House's line, with no runs scored yet by the Green team.

_Uh-oh._

Edward stepped up to the metaphorical plate, holding the ball grimly. "You've resorted to dirty tricks no gentlemen should stoop to." he said, taking a very familiar stance. "I will not tolerate it!"

_Uh-oh._

"Wh-what is that?!" a trio in the crowd gasped.

 _"Rushing Violet Vapor, Purple Burnout!"_ Edward cried, pitching the ball in exactly the same manner as Cheslock from before as it hit the ground and zipped forward under the wild swing of the unprepared Blue batsman.

"Bowled! Out!" the announcer roared as cheers broke out across the stands and I saw Ciel's remaining eye widen incredulously.

_Uh-oh._

I shuffled and tried not to look too complacent as Edward continued batting with that sneaky trajectory-shifting bowl, outing batter after batter as Blue House rapidly lost what little ground they had gained. What little cohesion they had left was lost in a very extreme and sudden manner as the dude currently batting –spiky-haired blond with oval glasses– completely missed the cue to even swing his bat, looking around frantically and locking his gaze on the small bandstand, which was now conspicuously empty of any tall black-haired Housemasters. The place of conductor was now manned by a fluffy-haired pipsqueak who probably didn't even come up to my shoulders, someone who I guessed was that Maximillian/Macmillian/Mc-something kid Ciel had been hanging about with during this arc.

 _Sans_ Sebastian and Ciel's first ploy, we ate up the remaining half of the first inning pretty quickly, as the Blue batsmen swung with increasing panic and decreasing coordination, managing to score a paltry lead of 60-0 on us before the teams switched, with a dark-haired dude in a buzzcut grabbing the first cricket bat as Greenhill punched and shook the rest of us encouragingly.

"All right, you chaps! Time to bat! First order of business is evening out the score!" he shouted, as we all saluted like the military officers most of the others would probably grow up to be.

"Yes, sir!"

I kept an eye on Ciel as the rest of us sat in the fold-out canvas chairs, and blinked as I was rewarded with the sight of Ciel thrusting his right arm out diagonally towards his hip as he simultaneously slapped his left hand against his right shoulder, two fingers extended. It was obviously some kind of signal, but to whom…Sebastian? Where had the demon…oh, right. Chasing the headmaster. Who was Undertaker. Who hopefully hadn't sensed my illusion.

Nervous and self-conscious, I smoothed a hand over my short blond hair.

The Sapphire Owl bowler pitched soft and high, and our guy moved to swing, then flinched, almost physically taken aback, before he quickly remembered himself and hit, knocking the ball up high in the air.

"I've got it!" a bespectacled Blue House player cried, yelping as the ball hit his hands hard enough to bounce out for another Sapphire Owl to lunge and grab it before the cricket ball hit the ground.

_Wait a second…_

"How could you let that pathetic ball get the better of you?" our next guy snorted, snatching the bat from his predecessor –who seemed oddly flushed– and marching up to his position. "I'll give it a right good smack!"

And the same process repeated: aggressive beginning, deer-in-headlights-freeze, before a quick jump back into action that barely managed to save the ball but sent it right into the hands of a Sapphire Owl player.

"Not again!" Edward cried.

"What on earth is the matter with you lot!?" Greenhill berated as that guy came back, apologizing and rubbing the back of his neck, and I swallowed as I accepted the bat from him and marched up to the plate.

_If this is going where I…yup._

Posed perfectly to fall within the vision of a batting player, Lau was sprawled on a very nice embroidered blanket underneath an umbrella –along with what seemed like every last girl from his betting booth, and all of them (minus Lau) wearing costumes that even _I_ considered more than a tad risqué. Fitted tightly to every curve they had, above and below, the hems of these…cheongsam, they probably qualified as that and not just shirts…barely cleared the thigh, so that unless they were wearing _very_ short shorts underneath, all it would take is a lift of the leg and maybe a small breeze for any one of these girls to flash the entire stadium.

So, of course, probably just as if not more alarming to the Victorian crowd, this left their legs completely exposed right down to their neat little leather shoes, and these legs were lifted or displayed in a variety of attractive, alluring poses, with some (including Ran-Mao, who was in Lau's lap) sitting on the blanket with a single leg lifted enticingly, others standing in a rough semicircle in slightly bent positions, leaning forward or away to draw attention to their balance and poise.

I sighed and returned my attention to the bowler as he wound up and pitched.

"Oh no," I deadpanned, taking an ineffective swipe in the general direction of the ball. " _Limbs_."

The ball shot past and bowled me as the crowd roared disapproval, and it was with a pitifully contrite expression that I trudged back to Greenhill and the others and Edward took the bat from me. He rolled up his sleeves a little in preparation before grabbing the bat solidly in both hands.

"Let's do this!"

_Glare, swoop, failure, yelp._

The crowd cried out as Greenhill yelled through a megaphone of his hands.

"Not you too! That was a golden opportunity!"

"I-I'm sorry!" Edward flustered.

"What's happened to Green House?!" the crowd booed. "Don't tell me they're relaxing 'cos they're up against Blue House!"

Edward had another go, which he failed –again– as I tried to muffle my giggles with game-appropriate scoffs of failure, the back of my fist pressed tightly against my grinning mouth.

The very wind seemed to rustle ominously over the field as Greenhill stiffly marched up to bat, the best cricket player of the school, one of the most physically intimidating students of his year, the cricket team captain…all sorts of ominous vibes for the other team.

"Let's go!" he shouted, hefting for his swing: and promptly spotted the ladies, freezing up and turning red. His swipe was even more ineffective and belated than mine as he squeaked. "Nwah!"

"Out!"

Unfortunately for Ciel, the next thing I saw was a very angry and very pompous-looking gentleman marching over to Lau and his…employees, barking out what was clearly a very hostile order to put on some pants/skirts and vacant the area, possibly in that order. A chorus of subtle, disappointed "aw"s rippled across our metaphorical bench as the other boys spotted Lau being dragged away with his betting assistants following with chipper steps, which forced me to fake a cough that had Edward patting me on the back in slight alarm as I tried not to audibly cackle.

_***Time Skip***_

Ten more overs and at the end of the first inning, with the current score 60-52, Blue House leading, Greenhill rallied his somewhat flustered troops, myself included, as we prepared to pitch once more.

"It's the first half of the second innings! We'll keep our losses to a minimum!"

"Yes, sir!" we all cried, saluting again.

Laurence Bluer strode out onto the pitch to be the first batsman, hunching over in a very odd pose indeed.

"What kind of form is that?!"

"He's holding his bat with a reverse grip!?"

"You there!" the umpire barked. "Hold your bat properly!"

"No, this will do." Bluer answered calmly, not straightening up as he held his cricket bat grounded in front of his wickets like a sword he was about to pull from the stone. I got the principle: there was no way, barring some weird shift of his legs, that a ball would get through to the wicket while he was at bat…but that also meant he couldn't swing.

_Although…_

Sure enough, our guy pitched good and hard, and Bluer's eyes flashed before he twisted his planted bat, the ball hitting it hard and ricocheting off towards a spot in the outfield conspicuously free of our outfielders. He and his fellow batsman ran between the creases, scoring two runs.

"So that's their game…" I mumbled, before sighing. Legally, I was required to try and catch those balls, when logically, I knew Bluer and the others would be doing their best to send them into the gaps between players, meaning I would have to run. And in all this June heat, after another game, too…

I sighed again.

Technically speaking, with some small calculations of my own, I supposed that since their new strategy here required twisting the cricket bat to bounce the ball off, creating a limited fan of direction between incidence and reflection that they could send the ball _in_ , it would be comparatively easy to clog up and slow down by us grouping in a fan around said batting zone, instead of spread out all over the field in preparation for the typical cricket ball, which could go a full 360 degrees.

This was an observation I did not share with any of my fellow Green players, since they could figure it out on their own, and I _was_ technically committed into helping the Sapphire Owls win.

Another thing we could do was just simply not pitch as hard, which left a much weaker energy for the Blue House to use to rebound their ball, something I slightly doubted the Green Lions would come up with at all, since their solution to many things was to hit harder until it went away.

As I suspected, we eventually came up with the first solution, though not the second, and I was forced to run all over the field with the other boys until I was red faced and panting and uncomfortably sweaty, and Blue House's score crept slowly up by twos and threes, and we retired for a tea break at the end of the third ten-over set, with ten more overs total (Blue House pitching) before the game was ended. The score was at their 105 to our 52, and depending on how the game would go, there were sixty bowls left (ten per Blue House bowler), so sixty balls would be thrown, or –if by some miracle they managed to get us out with every shot, ten more balls.

_Between ten and sixty, hmm? Pretty wide margin._

Meanwhile, I rehydrated with agonizingly warm tea, and even begrudgingly nibbled on some of the weird cucumber sandwiches for electrolytes or whatever it was that cucumbers held. Or was that pickles?

Eh, same difference. It was disgustingly green, so some part of it _had_ to be healthy. Thus, my nibbling was in good cause.

However easily Green House may or may not have coasted by in past matches –I didn't know, as I hadn't existed in this world for any of them– there was a certain amount of tension when we headed back onto the pitch. Blue House should've been clobbered into some ridiculously unpassable lead a whole inning back, like 289 to 12 or something, and that gap should only have gotten wider as the game played on. But here they were, not only in the lead, but also putting pressure on us with new and unexpected tactics that we were having a hard time countering. Violet Wolf was infamous for its trickiness, sure, but the Sapphire Owls were pulling out all the stops on their legendary calculating acumen, splicing together numbers and using their fullest knowledge of physics to run rings around us macho ball-throwing types.

Me, I was in a fairly good mood, since I had little to no emotional investment in the game as itself, but even _I_ was dragged down a little by the grim and stoic faces around me, since I was, at least, friendly acquaintances with Greenhill, and one step below that with Edward. For the rest though, I was mostly a blank face replacing whatever other NPC that was originally supposed be batting in my place on the team, so I didn't really care about them and they didn't really care about me.

Playing was tough, as Green House started hitting harder as Blue House bowled, both hanging on with grim determination. If the Sapphire Owls could keep us on the back foot, their lead was big enough that they had a chance to win this. However, if we put our metaphorical pedal to the metal, we'd be able to power through and claim victory ourselves, so tensions were high at the eighth over, when four more outs or twelve more bowls would decide victory, and we were at 105 to 91, Blue House leading.

It was then that they put Ciel up to bowl, and even though I was benched on one of those comfy canvas chairs, I swallowed hard.

Just to look at things without the context I had, such a move was honestly laughable. Ciel was a skinny little twig at the best of times, and he was easily a whole head and a half shorter than even the other Blue players, so standing out on the field with us, he looked positively miniscule. Seeing him ostensibly being put forward to bowl against our guy –who was twice as broad and definitely a foot or so taller– was pathetically ridiculous, especially when you considered this was basically the bottom of the ninth and only fourteen points separated our scores, the work of three successful bowls if worst came to worst.

It was at this point that Ciel stuck his left arm straight up in the air and tapped his right thumb, middle, and ring finger in a peck against his cheek, his index and pinky stuck straight up like he was rocking out at a concert –or flipping someone off in some parts of Europe. This was apparently a signal to his fellow Blue House players, who all rushed to gather –on the sides and directly behind our batsman.

 _"Nearly all of the outfielders are positioned around the batsman?!"_ the announcer cried as the crowd murmured in excitement and trepidation. _"How do they plan on defending like that?! Green House will be able to hit the ball to wherever they please!"_

"Its just one trick after another with this lot…" the batsman muttered, looking around himself uneasily like a lion surrounded by jackals. "Are they messing us about?!"

"Here I come!" Ciel called, and bowled the expectedly wimpy throw…which, upon striking the ground, bounced right up at the batsman's face.

"Ack!" he cried, barely getting his cricket bat up in time to protect his nose from the sharp delivery of the leather ball as it bounded off, bounced once on the grass, and was caught by the Clayton dude. _"Hey, watch where you're bowling!"_

The crowd murmured as our guy set up again. "You have absolutely no control!" he grumbled. "Well, it was a dot ball, so at least we get to have another go."

"I do beg your pardon." Ciel said, bowing.

"Its fine."

Ciel dashed forward and bowled again: and the ball bounced again, going right towards the dude's eyes as he frantically swatted it away with his cricket bat and the ball was caught without touching the ground.

"Out!" cried the umpire as our batsman spluttered in shock.

"Wha-?!"

"I do beg your pardon." Ciel said mechanically, with another bow.

"Now just a minute!" our guy began heatedly. "I was only avoiding a dangerous ball just now. First off, bowling so carelessly twice in a row is-"

He trailed off with a gasp.

The realization that Ciel might have pitched those balls to fly towards the face deliberately was slow to come, but vocal once it hit.

"How cowardly can you be?!" Edward cried as the my teammates took up the cry.

"We misjudged you, Blue House!"

"Will you really resort to foul play to win?!"

"Foul play?" Ciel asked, still frozen in that polite bow. "When did that happen? Who did such a thing?"

"What…?" Edward hissed.

"A bowler delivers a ball toward the wicket. The batsman hits the ball in front of the wicket in order to defend it. The ball passes in the vicinity of the batsman as a matter of course." Ciel explained as he straightened up. "On this occasion, the ball traveled a path in the vicinity of the batsman's face due to my poor control. The batsman, "for some reason or other," swung and hit the ball into the air, and a fieldsman, who "just happened" to be near the ball, caught it before it hit the ground. Doesn't that make this a "simple" out?"

My eye twitched. _You wanna call it simple, maybe don't put so much sarcastic emphasis on the obviously dubious parts, kid._

"T-true." Edward stammered. "It doesn't violate the laws of cricket, but…"

"How can you call yourselves English gentlemen?!" the dude next to Edward cried.

"He's right!" added someone in the stands. "It's not cricket!"

"It's not cricket!"

"It's not cricket!"

"It's not cricket!"

"It's not cricket!"

I winced as the crowd took up the chant as a single rolling cry, the mood on the pitch souring rapidly as the Blue players looked around themselves, wary and pinched of face.

"QUIET!" Greenhill bellowed, striding angrily out onto the pitch as an obedient silence fell, his deep voice and powerful lungs lending a certain amount of command even towards the forming mob.

"I won't stand for heckling during this sacred match!" he continued, heading towards Ciel. "And how can you, in good faith, call Phantomhive a coward?!"

He grabbed Ciel by the wrist and pulled his right hand up high, displaying his chalky hand.

"Are you louts blind to this?!"

I could feel the mood shifting again, and sighed in relief as Greenhill lowered Ciel's hand a little, no longer looking like he was trying to pull the smaller earl right off his feet and hang him in the air like a puppet.

"This hand tells the tale. The tale of his efforts, and his persistence. Bowling accurately to target a batman's head is easier said than done. He must've put in a good deal of training to make it this far. This small lad, who hails from the unathletic Blue House, has gone to these great lengths! Do you understand what that means?! The owl has come with might and main to hunt the lion!"

The Green players gasped as the Blue players narrowed their eyes at us, and Greenhill dropped Ciel's wrist entirely and turned to his team.

"Is Green House so weak that we'd fall to one little trick?!"

We saluted. "NO, SIR!"

"So let's bring 'em down with everything we've got!"

"YES, SIR!"

Greenhill turned towards Bluer with a smirk. "I'm glad to have the chance to take on the real you before graduation, Bluer!"

Laurence Bluer smiled slightly. "Thank you. I share your sentiment…Greenhill."

"Right, then." the umpire coughed. "Play!"

Which was really unfortunate, since I was the next guy due to try and match wits against Ciel's wicked and devious ball-throwing tactics. So it was with a nervous wince that I accepted the cricket back and took my place, swallowing hard.

_I broke my nose for you once please don't make me break it for you twice._

Ciel wound up for his next tricky throw, and I wound up as well, preparing for another face shot –as the ball hit the ground and shot forward low and to the side, making me miss by a mile as I belatedly slapped my paddle down, at least blocking it from hitting the wicket and getting me out immediately as the ball bounded off.

"Right." I muttered as a line of sweat ran down my temple. I got this idea easily enough, especially since it had been pretty straightforward as explained in the manga.

_There's no dead ball in cricket, so Ciel's not going to be penalized for **trying** to hit me and the game's not gonna stop if I do get hit. Ergo, he can hit me, and we both know he can hit me, so its only natural for me to tense up and try and protect my face when he bowls. But if and when I do that, it leaves –shit, practically **everything** else completely open, and Ciel can take advantage of that by bowling off to the side where I basically have no chance of adjusting and swinging in time to actually hit the ball._

As another panicked Green player so eloquently said in the manga,

_Defend, and you're caught. Attack, and you're bowled._

_This is **over-the-edge tactics**!_

I had another go, but now this ball came at my face as I blocked it just in time, feeling the solid _whack_ of fast-flying leather against the wooden paddle as my cricket bat jerked back and nearly hit me in the face anyway, the ball sailing off into the unknown as my heart pounded hard against my ribs.

"Caught! Out!" the umpire cried, and I sweatdropped behind my bat.

"Thanks, boss." I said sardonically under my breath, lowering the bat to look at Ciel, who was outright _smirking_ at me from across the pitch. Cheeky little brat.

There wasn't really any mode of retaliation I could go for with hundreds of people watching us, aside from telepathy (which I had yet to learn), so I merely made sure to glare at him sternly as I spun on my heel and marched off to give the bat to Edward. I'd get Ciel later. We lived in the same house, as labyrinthine as the Phantomhive Manor may be.

The trick would be doing something petty enough to irritate Ciel but not so bad as would result in getting a visit from a certain black-clad butler.

An uproarious cheer thundering across the field jerked me out of my thoughts of plotting, and I looked up just in time to see the Green sections of the crowd in the stands going wild as that poor bastard on the stepladder –who had _remained_ on said stepladder for the entirety of this match– wiped out our score of 91 and replaced it with that of 97, and Ciel, his six bowls over, wiped the grungy back of his wrist across his equally grungy face, which was decorated with a smile of satisfaction.

_Uh-oh._

Laurence Bluer stepped forward, ruffling Ciel's hair. "Good job, Phantomhive." he said, tugging open the wrist buttons of his sleeves and folding them up near the elbow. "Leave the rest to me."

Ciel hurried to grab his catcher's mitts and scuttle across to stand behind Edward as Bluer called across the pitch.

"Its been a year since the last time, Midford."

"I scored thirty runs on you back then."

"And I'll turn the tables here all by myself." Bluer said implacably, before stepping forward to do his pitch. "Article 8 of Weston College's School Regulations: _Students must make every effort to devote themselves to their studies and training daily._ So this year!"

He wound up.

"We will be taking the victory for ourselves!"

Bluer threw hard, overhand: and the ball flew straight up in the air, disappearing into the bright burning disk of the sun.

I winced, Edward blinked, and I think all of Blue House –those not on the team– winced too as the laughter began.

"Did the ball…slip out of his hands?"

"He's all show!"

"Just 'cos you got smarts doesn't mean you oughta try your hand at sports toooo!"

Laurence Bluer turned away from Edward and the wicket, and reached up with his middle finger to adjust his glasses. They glinted a little in the bright sunlight: and the cricket ball came down like a missile directly behind Edward, smashing into the wickets and sending them to the ground with a hollow wooden _clatter_ that echoed and re-echoed in the sudden dead, shocked silence that rang across the field.

Ciel smirked as he caught the ball on its first bounce, Edward gaped, and Greenhill and me and all the rest of the Green Lions stared.

"A-AMAZING!" someone screamed from the stands.

"WHOA!"

"What was that?!"

"How is that even _possible!?"_

"You did it!" the squeaky Blue House guy from before cried, squeezing Clayton in a bear hug from the side. "Bang on, House Captain!"

"Did you see that, Green House!" Clayton screamed across the pitch, shaking his fist in the air.

"The ball…fell out of the sky?" Edward murmured, still staring up at the blue vault of heaven as if it would yield up its answers. Laurence Bluer's glasses gleamed even more brightly as he turned around again, like a laser beam cutting across the field.

"It just took a simple calculation of trajectory." he answered calmly, and a tangible chill ran through the Green House players –minus me, who was quite frankly _loving_ the absurd lengths this cricket match was going to and quite pleased that I would no longer have to bat or pitch at all. I wished I had some popcorn. Did popcorn exist at this point in time? It should.

"H…how exactly are we s'posed to hit a ball like that…?" Heinz murmured, shaking.

 _"He brought down the seasoned Edward Midford with one delivery!"_ the announcer bellowed as the stands shook with the crowd's cheering. _"What on earth was that ball?!"_

"Leave it to you to come up with that, Bluer." Greenhill said as he accepted the bat from Edward, striding ponderously across the dusty grass. "A delivery calculated to within an inch of its life is so like you. However," Greenhill swung his arm –and the bat– out in front of him to point at Bluer like a challenge of war. "There's no such thing as a ball I can't hit!"

"The last batman's Greenhill."

"It's a P4 showdown!"

_"Brains versus Brawn, which will prevail?"_

There was a brief pause, the calm before the storm as everyone settled into their shoes and a hush fell across the stadium, before Bluer began.

"Here we go!" he shouted, dashing forward and pitching that signature ball again: straight up, no deviation, untouchable, sailing into the sky as free and lonely as a cloud as the Green Lions all held their breath.

"GO-O-OOOO!" Blue House and all its team members shrieked as Greenhill looked up and swung his bat back in an overhead hold, like he was holding a broadsword. With a roar that sounded like it came from a bear, he slammed his bat forward, and with a crack so loud I half-expected the leather ball to split in half, he hit the damn thing as it plunged forward, shooting like a comet across the field and ploughing into the stands so hard that, when the dust cleared and the terrified spectators were revealed to be huddling away from the point of impact, it was revealed to have shattered at least one part of the wooden planking.

"A-"

"A…"

 _"A SIX!"_ the announcer cried as the crowd roared. _"Its 105 to 103!"_

"I've seen right through your bowling." Greenhill declared as he lowered his bat, and Bluer choked, his face going pale. I saw in his expression something of the defeat a cornered rat might have, mingled defiance and hope and utter, crushed disbelief. Hell, he'd put lord knew how many days and hours into mastering that utterly absurd and impossible delivery, something he had been so _sure_ would grant his beloved House victory for the first time since Ciel's dad had been in residence (and wasn't _that_ a suspicious coincidence), and here Greenhill had quite literally smashed his carefully calculated plan all to pieces. If it were me, being the House Captain in the hot seat as Bluer stared at me like that, I'd honestly just fudge my swing maybe a little on the next pitch, because, like, _fuck_ , man. Give the guy a break. Dozens of wins over the years compared to two in all Blue House's recorded history? I could set my pride aside for a bit for that.

But nah, we were all die-hard sportsmen. Greenhill was going to whack that second ball just as hard, if not harder, than the first, and Bluer knew it, and Ciel knew it, and every damn member of both teams knew it. Victory didn't count if they both weren't putting forward their all and whatnot.

Ciel crossed the pitch, stepping up to his prefect and patting his shoulder, and a few words passed between them. Bluer looked towards his team, who all beamed at him with exhausted, confident expressions and a few errant thumbs-up. They were ready for this. They had come so far, had dealt such a blow to Green House's implacable pride, their tower of being the most successful House. They'd done this much, come this far –and there was always next year, even if they didn't quite get it this time. Next time, next time, they could all do this again next time.

It was all about the next bowl, and my eyes narrowed as I saw Ciel press it into Bluer's hand. I did remember this part, since it was one of the rare times Ciel came away visibly injured, with blood and everything.

Bluer had based his calculations on a number of things, probably, I thought as he stepped back and Ciel returned to his place behind Greenhill. The windage (minimal), the actual shape of the ball (unchangeable), the strength of his pitch (no doubt carefully identical), the distance (measurable), the angle of incident (also identical) and finally, the weight of the ball itself.

The fun thing with variables, is that even if you got every single last one of them exactly identical, if you missed just one, things were going to get thrown off. So, say, if Ciel had somehow passed Bluer a ball with a _barely_ adjusted weight, something even the guy throwing it wouldn't notice –well.

It would feel the same as he threw it.

It would go the same as it flew up into the air.

It would dive down towards the wickets almost the same –just a _tiny_ bit farther away.

And Greenhill, instinctively adjusting for this, would shuffle back _just_ a little for maximum potential.

The combinations of all these new factors meant one and only one thing: as Greenhill roared, swung back, as the ball plunged down out of the sky, an ugly _smack_ resonated across the field as the business end of Greenhill's hard wooden bat slammed into Ciel's forehead with enough force to knock him backwards.

Laurence Bluer froze.

The crowd froze.

Greenhill, staring over his shoulder, froze too.

"No ball!" the umpire called frantically as Ciel collapsed onto the ground and the ball bounced softly into the grass a few feet away, a judging that I vaguely remembered meant that Green House got one point and the ability to run between the creases, hence giving the opportunity for more.

Since the ruling meant our scores had been changed to 105 to 104, Blue leading, our dude in the opposite crease obviously started to run, eager to tie up the match and hopefully score a win.

However, as Ciel curled up and screamed, hands over his bleeding head, Greenhill had a different response.

 _"Are you all right!?"_ he gasped, abandoning the crease entirely and running towards Ciel as the young earl lay prone on the ground.

Ciel, who was but a few feet from the ball, looked groggily over his shoulder as Greenhill's partner skidded to a stop in surprise. "Aren't you gonna run!?"

I watched, not entirely sure if the dizziness and the scream were false or not –sure, it was a direct conk on the forehead, and blood was streaming down Ciel's face, but A) head wounds bled a lot no matter what, and B) Ciel was a scheming little shit who may very well be faking the whole thing just to pull Greenhill away from the game– as Ciel valiantly struggled forward on all fours, grabbed the ball, and threw without raising himself up from his elbows.

Greenhill, who had just reached and was kneeling over him as he threw, obviously couldn't stop it. His fellow batsman, who had cottoned onto Ciel's movements a lot faster and was frantically running back for his crease, was facing the wrong way to stop it.

No one else on the field was currently legally capable of stopping it.

The ball hit the wicket with a soft _clack_ that echoed around the stunned silence of the stadium, bowling it over.

"Umpire!" Ciel wheezed.

The man gasped, before hastily remembering his job.

"OUT!" he cried, jabbing a finger up in the air. "Green House, ten outs! Time! The match is over!"

"B…"

"B-"

"B-!"

"BLUE HOUSE WOOON!" the crowd and announcer screamed as one, as all member of the Sapphire Owls cricket team ran onto the pitch to pile onto Ciel and yank him to his feet as he was buried in an avalanche of hugs, and Greenhill bowed his head with an accepting smirk. I, shameful to admit, rubbed my hands together greedily as dollar signs (or would that be pound signs here?) flashed in my eyes, imagining just how much I had inadvertently suckered out of my fellow betters at Lau's booth.

"It's a second Miracle of Sapphires! Huzzah!" the team cheered, hoisting Ciel up like he was crowdsurfing. "Heave-ho!"

Before they could complete their implicit promise of tossing him up and down in the air, Ciel was whisked right out of their arms.

"Hold it right there!" Sebastian chided, holding Ciel bridal style. "How could you be so reckless?! Getting that cut seen to comes first."

"Mister Michaelis…" Ciel began, before apparently forcing an angelic smile onto his face. "But…winning alongside everyone has made me so happy that I've all but forgotten the pain! We got to prove to everyone that even Blue House can win if we put our minds to it…"

"Heh." Sebastian smirked, before standing with his exhausted contractor as the assembled players and the audience began clapping politely. "You really are…a most incorrigible boy."

The appreciative claps continued as Sebastian walked with Ciel out of the stadium, and I looked around at my calmly resigned fellow players, before beginning to slowly edge in the direction of Lau's betting booth.

_***Time Skip***_

"WHOOO-FUCKING-HOOOO!"

I burst into the doors of the Weston College Sanitorium with a giddy grin on my face, ecstatically waving a bundle of bills.

"Bloody hell." Ciel muttered, deadpan, his bangs already raked back with one hand and eyepatch removed as Sebastian finished pouring out what was apparently some kind of sanitizing solution into a small handheld basin and looked up. "What have you done now?"

"I won 20,250 pounds off you and your genius underhanded tactics, that's what I did." I said with a beaming smirk, and if Ciel had been sipping any tea as was his usual habit, he would have spat on it.

"You were _gambling?!"_

"Yeah dude." I said casually, folding that lovely thick wad of bills and sticking it in my pocket. "I mean, sure bet."

I bent over him, inspecting the wound in his forehead, and winced. "Yowza. Greenhill got you good."

Ciel's eyebrows twitched, but before he could offer any scathing comments I was hustled to the side, Sebastian sliding me aside one-handed with the same implacable absent-minded force of a mother with a toddler, before he picked up a cotton ball with some tweezers and dipped it into his bowl of solution.

"Yes, and if we want the young master to avoid an unsightly infection, we shall need to tend to said wound." he drawled.

"Ow! Ouch!" Ciel yelped as Sebastian went about it with his typical ruthless efficiently, dabbing the ball soaked in alcoholic solution directly onto that open wound. "Can't you go about it a little more gently?!"

"Dear, oh dear." Sebastian sighed mournfully as he bent over him. "Had you not forgotten your pain out of happiness?"

"You must be joking!" Ciel snapped. "If it hurts, it hurts! Ugh!"

Sebastian chuckled as he dabbed the ball in the solution again. "Your playmaking went exactly as planned. Superbly done. However…it appears you came away with an even finer _badge of honor_ than you had anticipated."

Ciel growled as Sebastian finished dabbing the wound clean and set down the tiny basin. "Curse that Greenhill…"

"Eh, if you told me this was what you were planning, maybe I'd have given you like some magic face shielding or something." I said, bouncing down onto the bed next to Ciel as he turned his head to glare at me.

"You are _obnoxiously_ chipper."

"And decidedly more informal than your usual wont." Sebastian said, flicking the cotton ball and its attendant dripping alcohol solution (mixed with some of Ciel's blood, ew) at me like he was trying to punish a cat. "Give the young master his proper space."

"Dude, I just won like -like infinity money, for a plebian like me." I said, before collapsing back to lay on the bed with a blissful sigh. "I am riding high and on cloud nine."

"Sebastian, remove this invasive, uncouth female from my bed immediately."

"Alright, alright!" I yelped, launching upright before Sebastian could make any moves in my direction. "Grumpy gus."

Ciel huffed as Sebastian took out a roll of cotton bandages and began winding them around his forehead. "I don't know what kind of goings-on are permissible in your world in the future, but I can very well do without your theatrics, Thompson." he said firmly as I stood before him, arms folded.

"Indeed." Sebastian murmured. "Speaking of theatrics, I have retrieved the ball from earlier, per your command."

He shook his sleeve a little, and the ball fell into Ciel's waiting hand as the earl looked at it ponderously beneath Sebastian's hands and the winding bandages.

"I really don't think Bluer would've noticed the trick. But better to be safe than sorry. After all, the weight of the ball only differs slightly." He smiled and hefted it up and down in his hand a couple times. "But thanks to this, we were able to take the championship all according to plan. Still…" He looked down at the small leather ball. "To bowl a ball you know will be beat…I don't understand Bluer and the others one bit."

"I too cannot comprehend the human aesthetic of a "beautiful defeat" at all." Sebastian agreed, and I raised an eyebrow as he knotted the bandage off and bowed away.

"Out of curiosity, _is_ there a human aesthetic you do get?" I asked archly, looking at the butler.

"The finality of death and the beauty of cats."

I snorted. "Edgy bitch."

Ciel coughed loudly in our general direction. "In _any case_ …how did you do, Sebastian?"

The demon sighed as he rummaged around behind one of the racks and pulled out a neatly folded suit and pants with a black top hat perched on the top of the stack. "The Headmaster…is here." he said, holding it out to a bewildered Ciel.

"Hunh?"

Sebastian sighed again as he replaced the hat and suit… _somewhere_ inside his long black academic gown. "I regret to inform you that I did my utmost to pursue him, but the moment I had him, this was all there was."

Ciel's eyes widened as I gave a low whistle, trying to pretend this was someone or something else and not the Undertake which I already definitely knew. Method acting, yeah. Feeel the role…

It seemed to work, since neither Ciel nor Sebastian cut my suspicious looks as Ciel flopped back a little on the bed with an irritated scoff. "In that case, I should've just had you make me some desserts or something. I'm famished!" he grumbled, and Sebastian smirked as he turned aside, picking up a domed dish platter.

"I thought you might say that." he said, turning around and presenting it to his master. "So I prepared this for you. But…you will have to save this for later."

I barely had time to think of what that might mean before Sebastian popped the lid back on the dome and the doors burst open, and before I could think the world had gone very dark indeed and I was somewhat unable to move as the ecstatic cries of the Blue House rang around the vaulted stone walls and ceiling.

"PHANTOMHIVE!"

_What what what what what the fuck **what** -_

I began to struggle frantically against the iron bar clamped over my chest as the sound of a dozen or more cheering boys rushed into the room, before the grip on me tightened and I heard Sebastian murmur under his breath.

"Struggle and you risk complicating this immensely for all of us."

What -oh. Right. Green House, Blue House, rivals, me being in the Sanitorium while Ciel was here, hella suspicious and so on. Hence, being bundled away out of sight.

My pulse began to climb as I realized Sebastian's solution to that problem was to quite literally stuff me inside his voluminous black teacher's robe and keep me there with an arm folded over my (but ostensibly his) chest before anyone could spot the fact that I'd been in the room.

Being back to chest with a hot bishie was somewhat more nerve-wracking when you realized he was in a perfect position to snap your neck and a significant portion of him actually _wanted_ to. Like, yes he was hot, but possible imminent looming death? Sort of took psychological prominence.

I did think I finally managed to pin down what was so weird about Sebastian's body, inasmuch as the weird way his hand had felt when he'd helped me down from the crates on the _Campania_. No body heat.

And it wasn't like he was cold, not quite, it was more –cipher. Even with the multiple layers of cloth sandwiched between us, with a regular human I still would be able to at least subconsciously sense the presence of their core temperature, and with steel or ice or some other substance that ordinarily felt or radiated cold, I still would've felt _that_. But Sebastian was –nothing. Neither hot nor cold, just…there. He wasn't breathing, either, just…standing there as the Blue House students babbled around us, arm firmly pressed over my sternum and keeping me trapped between that and his chest like I was caught in some weird sort of metal clamp.

"You there! Quiet in the sanitorium!" Sebastian barked as one particular high voice rose above the others, and hoo _boy_ , that was even _weirder_ , because even though I felt his chest expand against my back it didn't- it didn't do it _right_ , was all I could really describe it as, and there was no vibration from his lungs resonating out into his chest and against my back when it did.

_So **this** is what the fans that are actually caught up mean by saying Sebastian's human shape is basically just a malleable container for him…_

None of what I was feeling right now was something the average person would have cause to _notice_ , and even if the situation changed –Sebastian could clearly fake what was necessary to fake. He just didn't see a need for it, not right now, not with a magician who already knew what he was and not when none of the boys crowding around and congratulating Ciel were even paying attention to the Housemaster as a concrete entity, never mind the fact said Housemaster wasn't really breathing or even simulating the movements of doing so.

Creepy.

I tapped my fingers nervously against my own thigh, waiting impatiently for all these brats to clear out so I could take a nice big step _away_ from the terrifying demon quite literally looming behind me and pinning me down, and then several more steps for emphasis. Potentially to possibly enough steps to take me right out of the Sanitorium entirely. Trying to distract myself from the not-quite-literal feel of said demon breathing down my neck, I focused on the words being tossed about on the outside of this surprisingly heavy muffling cloth as Ciel was pelted with questions that he attempted to answer in his usual calm way.

"Are you alright!?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Bluer was _crying!_ Did you see?!"

"No."

"Even stingy old Clayton was raving about you!"

"Oh?"

"I never imagined I would witness the Miracle of Sapphires firsthand! Thank you, Phantomhive!"

"It really wasn't my doing."

(Sebastian and I both snorted at that, thankfully more or less in unison.)

"Here you go!" another voice said cheerfully.

"Wah!"

"Your hat for the boat parade! They said you get to be the cox!"

"Th-thank you."

"Well, let's be off!" the same voice that had thanked Ciel for the Miracle of Sapphires said, and Ciel yelped as he was, judging by the scuffle of shoes, yanked to his feet.

"Eh?!"

"Its time for the champion House's boat parade!"

In an agony of anticipation, I waited as all the dozens of feet pattered off, presumably dragging Ciel with them, and then when the doors creaked and slammed shut again, pushed at Sebastian's arm and stepped forward.

And nothing happened, except my feet swinging forward uselessly before falling back to their original position.

_What the fuck **what the fuck** WHAT THE FUCK-!_

"Sebastian, let me out!" I squeaked, wrestling with his terrifyingly immovable arm for several increasingly panicked seconds before he finally spread it out and let me stumble out of his robe, gasping, and then whirling to see that mocking angelic smile.

 _"Fuck_ you!"

"You seem disturbed, Milord Thompson."

"I thought you were gonna -like pull me into that hammerspace you stashed the Headmaster's clothes in or something! Asshole!"

Sebastian's angelic grin shadowed over slightly into the toothier smirk that I knew was his quietly smug version of a boy stealing apples.

"I would never."

"Oh you _absolutely_ would, you utter and complete inhuman dickwad! You fucking scared me half to death!"

Sebastian's grin slowly, ominously widened.

"Only half?"

Were any Weston College students or staff to pass by the school Sanitorium at about this time, they would have spotted an absolutely furious Green House cricket player trying to strangle an oddly unperturbed Housemaster with his own rosary, but alas (luckily for me), there were none to witness this unprecedented degree of insubordination as everyone rushed to get down to the Thames for the aforementioned boat parade.

Sebastian, it should also be noted, was unfortunately impossible to strangle even when one was using a holy crucifix.

__

_***Time Skip***_

I sulked my way down to the Thames, and after wiggling in among the crowd –and admiring the admittedly gorgeous scenery of the sunset and the floating ornate paper lanterns, both on water in the air, allegedly lit by the same "fire of St. George" that the prefects had ignited the night before, finally managed to somehow find my way towards Greenhill and the other cricket players for Green House, most of whom were enduring surprisingly good-natured ribbing from their fellows about their ignominious defeat. Apparently even the most inveterate of sportsmen were willing to let one championship slide when the Blue House was so ecstatic about it…especially when Blue House wasn't lording it over them, too focused on their amazing good fortune to gloat.

Very nice, very healthy.

"Thompson!" Greenhill said with surprising cheer, slapping me on the back. Having endured backslaps from creatures that could literally lay him out flat, I barely wobbled and flashed him as bright a grin as I could under the circumstances. "Where have you been?"

_Enduring a sadistic demon's idea of a prank, that's what._

"Eh, around." I said vaguely with a casual shrug. "What'd I miss?"

"Blue House fell into the water after saluting the queen." he said with a slight chuckle. "Their whole boat capsized!"

"Nice."

"Though you don't seem to have missed the last of the fireworks!" he added, pointing up as I oohed and ahhed with the rest of the crowd and the Green House team. Since I was ostensibly the "new meat," the Weston College students then took it upon themselves to show me around the ensuing party, something I was glad and secretly touched for. After all, it wasn't like I had really bonded with them _that_ much…okay, maybe Greenhill, but again, spy-related ingratiation, so I felt a little guilty about his open-faced friendliness with me.

But no, I was the new kid, so they tugged me this way and that with all the exuberance of a dog with a brand new chew toy, introducing me to all their families –which induced more than one moment of heterosexual panic on my part as I was introduced to their "lovely young sister(s)" and had to do the bowing and hand-smooching and all that– and offering their condolences when I explained my family couldn't come for…reasons. Yeah. Totally legit ones.

They all seemed to assume something horrible had happened, since my offhand mentions of being basically "fostered" with a duo of Prussian and German military officials the past year or so and hastily stammered, awkward explanation towards my parents' absence did, admittedly, come off as a bit…well, tragic. After all, why would I, an American, be living in Germany as I was shuttled between two government officials not related to me? And why would I always stammer, wince, or look away when my family was brought up?

 _Obviously_ , there had been some sort of horrible tragedy, and I was an orphan who was too sensitive to bring up even the topic of his poor lost parents. Oh, woe for the pitiful Ryan Thompson.

Hence, a plethora of hearty backslaps, convivial "buck up and be a man" statements showered upon me every few moments, and insistences I try this one really good drink, or this one absolutely amazing pie, as Greenhill wandered off to treat with the other prefects and I was left trapped in the merciless clutches of a sympathetic sports team.

If I didn't end up smothered by the end of this night, I would die stuffed to the gills with food.

Still, this party was…nice. Even though I was still dressed in my grungy cricket uniform (apparently rushing off to snatch my winnings and then talk with Ciel and that scum-sucker Sebastian had eaten what little time I had to change) there were plenty of young ladies wanting to dance, and, alright, as long as they weren't too voracious in regards to the marriage market, dancing with them was…actually fun. I knew the proper dances, since picking up the waltz and whatnot was actually surprisingly easy, and since I'd only learned them as the leading partner, there was no muscle memories to confuse my steps, and talking with actual Victorians who had actual Victorian thoughts was almost as interesting as it was soul-crushingly exasperating, hearing all the outdated opinions and perspectives on things like women, animals, men, politics…eugh.

But still. Dancing, having fun, eating good food, talking with cheerful people, swirling around to spritely music on a well-lit plaza by the Thames River as it glowed with lantern light…you could do worse.

I was almost sad when the party ended and all the students trudged with varying degrees of exuberance back to our dorms along the moonlit paths, though I was definitely _not_ sad about the opportunity to change into clothing that hadn't gone through two sweaty and dusty games under the hot June sun and actually get in a quick bath. God, I'd really started feeling filthy, especially when several people who seemed suspiciously tipsy had heard my accent and demanded I go deep. I mean, a Virginian accent didn't sound _that_ Southern, did it?

Did it?!

Regardless, I had shamed my ancestors and all the state of Texas by busting out with what I considered an appropriately campy American accent, to delight all around…though I'd had to cut that shit and run pretty fast when I saw a silvery head of hair whip up like a fox catching a scent, tiptoeing –in what probably looked very comedic to an outsider– around Earl Grey who, for some godforsaken reason, had showed up at the party with his partner. Maybe they were alumni?

In any case, for the first time in hours, I was clean, I was pleasantly full of some admittedly wicked good food, and I was just tired and sore enough that burrowing into my nice thick featherbed and going to sleep sounded divine.

Which was almost certainly why, as I collapsed upon the pillow, there was a _crackle_ of paper underneath.

Resisting the urge to roll over and scream with frustration into the pillow, which would confuse and alarm my dormmates, I had to wait, impatiently, holding myself as still as I could as they all completed their nightly rituals and turned in, murmuring to each other and me about the game as I answered in monosyllables, hopefully instilling in them the idea that I was tired and wanted silence and sleep, in that order.

Another ten minutes passed, before the last few rustles of the sleepy teenagers rolling over in bed faded out, and I was safe to roll over and yank the envelope from under my pillow, sitting up in bed to read it, since right now we were at the crescent phase of the moon and lighting was shit, even with the curtains parted.

* * *

`A Fond and Hopefully Final Salutation,`

`Dear friend, as we come to what I hope the close of our separation, I find myself in need of your own, personal services for one last project. It shall entail some risk, so I shall ask you to come armed. Do not be alarmed, however, at this suggestion, for the danger is only a possibility, but nevertheless, one which we would both be keen on avoiding and may, if possible, be avoided by a show of force.`

`Do you come armed, then, to our usual meeting place, where my most trusted servant shall be to guide you. I have received the award you know I have been striving for, and would certainly appreciate your presence at the ceremony.`

`Father sends his greetings,  
-Your Fellow in the City`

* * *

So…Midnight Tea Party. Reading between the lines, at least, that was what this was. Ciel wanted me to meet Sebastian by the chapel, probably secretly.

For this, I was _definitely_ getting dressed. Confronting a Grim Reaper and the nefarious undead was a lot more stressful when in only a nightshirt, even as an idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: March 22nd, 2020, 1.05 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: March 21st, 2020, 11.50 PM USA Central Time


	55. That Butler, Rotting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, as far as I can ascertain Ciel's gun is actually a Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless (it was in the anime at least). But given as its 1889 right now…we'll just say it's a pocket hammerless. 
> 
> Also, according to the author comic at the end of the 17th manga volume, the whole over-the-edge "chuck it at the face or offside" thing Ciel did was not illegal AT THE TIME; however, after an Australia-England match in 1932, where similar tactics were used by the English team, rules were changed to adjust for such things, so it is illegal NOW. I'm not sure if the whole matching-swings-to-music would be penalized though, if only because it seems improbable to actually pull off successfully. 
> 
> Also, for Arya playing with her accent…I'm from Minnesota, which is two states over and two states up, which means my accent is Upper Midwestern. Since I never really specify WHERE in Virginia she's from, Arya probably has something between Appalachian and Southern for her accent. So for those of you who were concerned/amused about her mimicking a campy Texas accent, she'd probably be able to pull it off fairly well, before as mentioned dying of shame on the inside. 
> 
> I'm also starting to get to the finish line of this fic, inasmuch as I can actually see it now. One and a bit more arc to go. With any luck I can finally finish this fic…five years later. Let's all just not look at when this was published. Hide my shame. I started this series six years ago JESUS CHRIST.
> 
> I also finished writing this original chapter around 1 in the morning. Rest any concerns you might have: I've always been a bit of a night owl and the whole "no morning obligations" part of quarantine has meant my internal clock has shrugged and spun a roulette wheel, then shot itself in the face. When is it time to sleep? When should I feel tired? Certainly not until after I finish this goddamn chapter. And then read a whole bunch of other stuff to wind down. Gotta have that book before bed.

_Arya's POV:_

Since I was planning for a fight (and, thankfully, since Ciel had _ordered_ me to plan for one, since it'd be a wee bit suspicious to show up armed to the teeth otherwise), I went all-in on my weaponry. Colt tucked in its engraved holster on my hip, extra box of ammunition in my pocket (perhaps not the best storage method, but it wasn't like I had one of those neat bandoliers you always saw in action movies), and knife strapped on my wrist under my sleeve, since that was how I'd gotten used to carrying it around. Some _real_ shoes, not the patent leather dressy ones they gave to Weston students: shoes you could run in and fight in and, in a pinch, kick down doors and aggressive assailants without breaking or bruising your heel. Dark pants, dark suit jacket, and I cheated a little and pulled a dark dress shirt from the depths of my apocalypse bag, since there would potentially be a lot of standing around and lurking in the darkness. I briefly considered smudging my pale face with ash, then decided I'd probably do a crap job of it (having never done so before) and, if it truly would be that important, Sebastian would probably do something.

Suited and booted and with every weapon I comfortably knew how to wield, magic excluded (since that wasn't really something you could arm or disarm), I squeaked open the window and began to climb down the long-suffering ivy plant that wound its increasingly precarious way along the brickwork of the Green House dorms. A tiny part of me actually missed the warm and dewy feeling of the grass against my bare feet, but just as I absolutely refused to knowingly run into a fight in my pajamas, I refused to do so _barefoot._

Reckless I may be, idiot I was not.

Especially when you considered the presence of Undertaker and the likely presence of the Bizarre Dolls on campus. The absence of his motives nagged me: sure, it seemed an awful lot like casual mad science, but…that in itself bugged me. _Black Butler_ didn't _do_ casual villains, or at least, not pedestrian ones. Everything linked up to everything else: Madam Red brought us Grell, the Curry Arc brought us Soma and Agni, the Circus Arc linked back to Ciel's backstory and hinted at the ominous motives and backgrounds of the ones who had tortured him, the Murder Arc was a punishment from the Queen for Ciel so recklessly acting out in the Circus Arc, and the whole thing with the _Campania_ sinking and whatnot _was_ Undertaker in all his mad glory. Plus, _two_ story arcs centered on him and his efforts to resurrect the dead? The whole thing with the lockets, which remained unexplained even after tonight?

I distrusted the fact that, in this universe or out of it, all that seemed to be his motivation was fiddling around with the mysteries of life and death. That was _too_ simple, especially when you considered his dramatic reveal as a Grim Reaper.

I knew my genres and my tropes. When you had a character who was the focal point of more than one arc, who had a sudden and shocking reveal of relevance after some time as an _apparently_ harmless side character, and whose motives remained shrouded in ominous mystery –they were important. And they were going to be important for a while.

Thankfully, that wouldn't really come into play tonight…or so I hoped. After all, butterfly effect and all that, and for all I knew, the mere presence of a magician would immediately set Undertaker off on a long expository rant or something. After all, I'd been mostly in the background for the rare times I'd actually been in the same room as him, and we were both distracted, so he may have never noticed me before. It was entirely possible that magicians were all tied up in his super-secret weird motivational backstory, though I didn't think it likely.

The butterfly effect was also pleasingly nonexistent, which on one hand was slightly worrying, and on the other was slightly pleasing. It was nice to know that I didn't really affect the plot as such –but that was equally worrying, because what if I _wanted_ to at some point? Would the universe just, just reset around it? I'd read a fic like that once, where someone managed to save a character from their imminent death, only for that selfsame character to be metaphorically bodychecked shortly afterwards by a completely non-canonical coma, thus effectively removing them from the ongoing plot in the same fashion because, apparently, the universe wasn't having that shit. So, say, if for some incomprehensible reason I knocked Ciel out and tried to take his place at the tea party tonight, I might trip over a rock and knock myself out while Ciel managed to wiggle his way free and head to the tea party anyways. It'd be a big circular loop of futility and pointless exercise.

On the _other_ hand, that meant that, if this was how things were going, there was literally no way I'd lose my ability to predict certain parts of certain scenarios until we ran out of the manga material I'd actually read, no matter _how_ badly I stirred the metaphorical pot of canon. This, for me, was a good thing, as it sharply boosted my chances of survival.

Of course, there was also the much less pleasant alternative of the fact that nothing I'd done or been present for thus far would have much effect on the grand scheme of canon anyways, and the moment I took the wrong step the butterfly effect would come swarming in like the metaphorical tornado it was. After all, I'd basically just tagged along on the _Campania_ and done a few helpful but ultimately meaningless things both there and everywhere else. For all I knew, the second I did anything actually relevant and independent of Ciel and Sebastian, the whole canon I relied on would fall apart like a Jenga tower.

Like with the necromancer: sure, that was killing someone, which was a big honking butterfly effect thing, but that was a someone that, to my knowledge, never would've come into even satellite contact with Ciel or Sebastian or anyone in their circle of acquaintance, nor would any of his clients. This world, much as the dying fan in me loathed to admit, did not revolve around Ciel and Sebastian and all the other characters in _Black Butler_. If you looked at this whole thing as a spiderweb, there were plenty of strands that didn't lead to them, and I could pluck away at those to my heart's content without anything happening. It was only when I tried to affect canon, or inadvertently did something that would, that my situation got potentially precarious, made all the more so that aside from the literary butterfly effect (which may or may not be the full summation of the term), I knew absolutely _nothing_ about various…temporal/dimensional/plotline nonsense.

_Note to self, look that shit up when I get back home._

And, pleasantly enough, I _was_ getting close to being able to get back home. The acquisition spell I'd been studying and, very tentatively, copying out these past few weeks _seemed_ legit, so after we got out of Weston and I could practice magic without fear of Undertaker looming over my head, I'd be able to blitz my way through the remaining signifier magic sigils for this world in a matter of days, perhaps weeks. And, once I'd actually _gotten_ them, it was but the matter of a few hours to properly configure them for my purposes and arrange them inside the larger spell matrix: I'd certainly gotten enough practice at doing so.

It was just a matter of time…

The reminder made my heart beat just a little faster, though maybe that was just the implicit danger I was heading towards as I quietly crept across the school lawns, sliding from one patch of darkness to another as I kept my ears pricked for any sound, any sign of movement not my own. The lights were off in all the buildings: keeping flame burning unattended was a recipe for disaster, after all, and almost every student was exhausted from the long and exciting day and the party on the Thames afterwards. Weston was quiet and dark, except for one place –and this place, of course, was where I was going.

The church.

With smooth, elegant spires piercing the sky and one large belltower with two bells within it of equal size, one stacked atop the other, the outer wall circled around behind the imposing building, the stone boundary line softened by a covering of rose vines and bushy lichen. A few lights flickered inside the church through the glossy dark windows, like sparks from a firework, swimming into view and vanishing just as quickly. I thought I heard a faint strain of music, like from some enormous pipe organ, but even as I looked around and slunk closer it started to fade.

The area around the church seemed clear. The nice thing about Weston's ridiculously manicured lawns was that they were smooth and broad, and it would take a _lot_ of doing for someone to be within visual range of me without being in equal plain view. There wasn't a scrap of cover from here to the nearest building, not unless you were snuggled up right against the church itself.

This, I guessed, was what Sebastian was doing, and after a few more glances back and forth, making sure no one truly was around and that Ciel and the others were probably already inside, I darted across the lawn to take shelter against one of the jutting square pillars that scaled up the side of the building.

No outcry, no sounds of movement, even. I hadn't been seen by anyone.

Now…to find Sebastian.

This was easier said than done: I knew full well he'd be able to find me way before I could find him, and thus settled for cautiously peeking into the dark windows –seeing a few lit candles in lanterns, but no people– and slunk around the sides of the church, looking for the demon. I inched my way all the way over to the lower stone wall that apparently closed in a small inner garden between the church and the boundary wall –I heard the sounds of cutlery and soft conversation from the other side– but no Sebastian.

Puzzled and a little concerned, I backtracked, making sure to duck under and around the windows, since I didn't know if anyone was going between the church and the tea garden, going around to the other side, where, thankfully, I saw Sebastian standing patiently, near where the church's wall turned to the low wall of the garden.

I didn't whisper to him, since we were quite well able to hear the students on the other side, but I scraped my foot a little pointedly against the ground, which made him open one eye to glance at me. I waved silently, causing his lips to curl up in a slight smirk.

**Miss Thompson.**

I did the blinking version of a double-take.

 _You can do telepathy?_ I thought cautiously, trying to project said sentence in his direction. _I_ , after all, had never done any such thing and I really didn't know how, as it wasn't an ability my teacher saw much use in teaching me. What would have been the point?

**I am one _hell_ of a butler. If I couldn't manage silent communication, what kind of servant to the Phantomhive family would I be?**

I rolled my eyes and took my place next to him, leaning against the wall.

_So…what now?_

**We wait until the young master summons us.**

_For how long?_

**Until we are needed.**

_That sounds boring as hell._

**Eavesdrop. You certainly have had some practice in it.**

I winced at the brutal callback to the time I had peeped in on Ciel's talking with Lau and Sebastian had caught me at it, which of course preceded our first real talk and the reveal that I was in fact a magician.

Wait…

_How come you can wear a rosary and stand on holy ground when you're a demon?_

**It is ineffective against me.**

_I gathered as such. Explicate._

Sebastian huffed softly from beside me. If he'd been the type, he would have probably rolled his eyes too.

**The antithesis of demons such as I, who have no capability for loyalty or love, is faith, the same kind of faith Agni may summon in regards to his Lord and master, Prince Soma. Without faith, the many props of religion are just that: props. They are tools to summon faith, and in the hands of the truly faithful, they do indeed act as an effective deterrent against my ilk. However…**

His eyes, slitted and red, slid back to look at the building we were leaning against.

**This is a hollow stone building. The ground may have been sanctified, but there is no priest or congregation within to give that faith power. The rosary of a Housemaster is in the hands of a demon, and as I said: we cannot have faith. So, it does not harm me.**

Hmm. Interesting statement.

_So, strictly as a theoretical experiment, if I was to spike your cooking stuff with holy water and I believed really, **really** hard that it'd burn you…?_

**Strictly speaking, immature pranks by the servants can be punished by the head butler of a house. Would you care to expand on that statement?**

I swallowed hard.

_Shutting up._

There was a pause of a few moments as a warm summer breeze oozed across the lawn. A thought struck me, and I tentatively projected my consciousness at Sebastian.

_Uh, how are we gonna get in the garden? I get you can pop in and out in a second, but it might be a bit tricky for me to climb over the wall._

**I shall take you with me when the young master summons us both.**

_Oh **great**._

I heard Sebastian's soft, nearly inaudible chuckle beside me in the darkness. It seemed sarcasm could be carried over by telepathy as well as spoken speech. Good to know.

_3rd Person POV:_

,em>So that's him. Ciel thought as he stepped inside the bower of thorns and roses that was the Midnight Tea Party and its admittedly lovely garden. _The absolute ruler of Weston College. The Headmaster._

Chin resting on his clasped hands, elbows on the table, the Headmaster's face was hidden by the deep shadows cast by his lowered top hat, as if his head was bowed in deep contemplation. He was silent as the Vice Headmaster spoke beside him.

"Welcome, everyone. Please, sit."

Ciel and the others took their places, with the young earl at the end of the table opposite the Headmaster, prefects arranged down the side on his left, their fags on his right. The usual pleasantries were dispensed with, tea and sugar and cream passed or denied, as Redmond curled a finger around his own ornate saucer.

"It's a little dull, but let's toast with a cup of tea." he said, raising it and his saucer and looking to Bluer on his right. "Lawrence, propose a toast."

"Very well then." Bluer said as he raised his cup and saucer. "We have kept with tradition and seen the fourth of June through without incident." He lifted his teacup as all the others mimicked him. "A toast, to Weston Col-"

"One moment, if you please."

He was going to lead into this gently, Ciel decided. You caught more flies with honey than with vinegar, and he was going to lay each separate piece of information out slowly and perfectly, backing the prefects and the Headmaster into a corner without them ever even realizing it –or at least, so he planned.

"As it stands, I can't sincerely drink to this toast."

Bluer stared at him. No underlying alarm, only blank shock that he would interrupt the ritual of toasting. So, Ciel was not yet suspected of deeper intrigue…good.

"Why is that?" the prefect asked.

"Something weighs on my mind." Ciel began. "Derrick Arden and his friends."

Ah, and there was no mistaking _that_ alarm as all the prefects' eyes snapped towards him, wide, pupils narrowed to mere pinpricks. They were hiding something, and it was serious. Ciel set his teacup down with an air of finality, holding back his smirk under a mask of tranquil concern.

"I can't raise my teacup until I see them."

Edward, who knew full well what Ciel's usual presence entailed, though apparently unaware of what his superiors hid, furrowed his eyebrows. "Ciel…?"

"Headmaster, sir." Ciel called across the table. The man was still silent, unmoving: he may as well have been a tailor's dummy, posed and rigid. His silence puzzled and slightly alarmed Ciel –was he merely a cover by the prefects, and as unaware of their crime (whatever it had been) as their fags? But if so, how, and _why_ , had he been able to evade Sebastian? The innocent may sometimes run, but those who were truly innocent of any wrongdoing were never able to do so successfully with a devil on their tail. "Will you listen to what I have to say?"

"Phantomhive, you're being rude." Bluer said. Attempting to divert, perhaps? It wouldn't work.

"I'm well aware of that." Ciel said blandly. "But in Article 15 of the school regulations, it is written thus: _Be considerate of your schoolfellows and assist them with love and affection… **at all times**_."

Bluer _flinched_.

"Derrick Arden. Richard Gleason. Hans Hardy. Robert Isaac. Wayne Thewlis. I've heard it said that since about a year ago they've not once returned home and have shut themselves up in their House." Time to massage the truth a little. "You see, when I enrolled at this school, their parents begged me to persuade them to return home just once."

"Hoh." Vice Headmaster Agares hummed.

"But when trying to come into contact with them, I was met with odd situations at every turn. And I've been unable to catch even a glimpse of them." Ciel continued, noting the strange exhale from the man but saying nothing as he wondered to its cause. What had he said to cause such a note? "Their sudden transfers from Red House to Purple House, for one. More puzzling still is what occurred during the fire the other day. Every student of Purple House ought to have evacuated, but the missing students were nowhere to be found. Yet Violet said _everyone_ was safe."

The Purple House prefect jerked guiltily to stare at Ciel as he was addressed, before his eyes slid aside, half covered by his ever-present hood.

"Violet…?" pressed his fag, but the prefect did not speak.

"Violet must've simply lost his head, like everyone else." Redmond said coolly.

Ciel did not repress the incredulous expression on his face as he tossed out a hand. "Could a prefect, one who is granted autonomy here at illustrious Weston, truly have made such a grave error?"

"Well…" Johann Agares said, more suspicious than ever, as the Headmaster _still_ sat silent and immobile beside him, perhaps the faintest hint of a frown on his shadowed face. Ciel wanted to grind his teeth at the tone the Vice Headmaster was putting forth, though: it was the prim, effortlessly, casually condescending tone of one who knew their wrongdoings could not be actually proven, and was enjoying the opportunity to turn aside an ineffective interrogator. "…who can say."

Ciel wasn't having it, and slammed both hands down on the table, rising to his feet. "In any case! The fact remains that they weren't in Purple House! Five students have disappeared from a public school where every single day is strictly managed. Something is clearly amiss here!"

His eye flicked over the table, to the alarmed-looking fags, who stared, stunned, at his outburst.

_Based on our investigation thus far, Derrick and the others are no longer at this school. At best, they've fled. At worst, they're dead._

His gaze darted up towards the head of the table.

_The Headmaster, who moved them between Houses…the P4, who have free reign over the school –its obvious that they're concealing something._

Violet still wouldn't even look at his face: Bluer and Greenhill were staring at him in shock, but theirs was mixed with alarm, and Redmond was _glaring_ at him with narrowed eyes.

_They brushed me off before by saying "It was the Headmaster's decision," but that excuse won't work here, with both parties present. I'll uncover what you're hiding!_

He leaned further over the table, pleading and demanding simultaneously in posture as he raised his voice again. "It seems increasingly likely that they're in a situation of great peril! Headmaster! Why not ask for the Yard's assistance in getting to the bottom of this?!"

They _had_ to respond to this, there was simply no way that anyone, no matter what they were hiding or how they were doing it, could hold back in the face of such an attack. Ciel had given them no reason to think he was investigating on behalf of another, had no pulled aside his façade of a concerned student even once –if they somehow managed to brush him off, he still had avenues of interrogation. If they confessed, all the better.

But they could not, absolutely _could not_ , remain silent. To do as such would be to blatantly admit both their guilt and their involvement in one, and there were witnesses here, in the form of the four nonplussed and increasingly agitated fags. The guilty party had to do something, and Ciel was more than ready for it.

"There is no need to do that." Vice Headmaster Agares said, making Ciel widen his eyes as everyone gasped and looked towards the man.

"What?"

"For…they are right here in the school." the Vice Headmaster continued ominously, pointing over Ciel's shoulder at the chapel. "Look."

The young earl spun with a gasp, staring at the curved handle of the garden door as it rattled a few times, then caught and turned, the quaint wooden door slowly creaking open as a figure stepped out.

"Hullo…I detect the wonderful aroma of tea."

Ciel may never have met him, but he knew that face as its owner stepped out of the shadows. He'd seen the photo enclosed in the Queen's message.

_Derrick Arden?!_

What in blazes? How had this happened? Ciel had been _hoping_ for the former result of the two options, of course, but, well, it was overwhelmingly likely that it had been the latter, and Derrick and all his associates were dead!

_He's alive?! Then why did he drop out of sight until now!?_

A quick glance showed that the prefects, strangely enough, seemed equally shocked, or at least almost as much, as Derrick Arden strode down the length of the table towards the headmaster.

"Well, rats!" Cheslock scoffed, much less perturbed than his prefect, who huddled and leaned away over the table as Derrick passed him. "There he is, all fine and dandy."

"Arden…?" Greenhill asked as the other student slowed at his chair, coming to a stop. "Are you really f-"

" _Hullo_." Derrick said as his mouth broadened in a toothy grin. " _I detect the wonderful aroma of tea_."

Greenhill shuddered as Ciel felt a chill run down his spine, watching the prefect lean back, hand on the back of his chair as he pulled away from Derrick, who bent at the waist, looming over him, as the scene slowly but inevitably inched towards disaster, the strain in the air teetering, uncertain, like something set on the edge of a table and about to fall.

"A…Ard-"

Swift as a panther, Derrick grabbed the prefect's outstretched arm and _pulled_ as he lunged forward, mouth agape, chomping down on the muscle of Greenhill's arm between shoulder and elbow. Awful crunching and ripping sounds echoed from that mouth as blood spurted over Greenhill's sleeve.

The prefect _screamed_ as he was forced back against the table with a crash of plates and crockery as the other prefects shot to their feet. Edward, however, was first to act, leaping onto the table in a rage.

"You cur!" he cried, leg shooting up and out in an explosive kick as he ripped the gnawing Derrick's head away from his prefect with a nasty crack of bone and tissue. "What d'you think you're doing!?"

Derrick's head dangled back for a moment, unsupported, then dipped forward heavily as he continued to move.

The chill running down Ciel's spine became a parade of icy ants crawling all over his skin. He recognized that limp, persistent movement, and from the expression on his face, so did Edward.

"Wha-"

Derrick lunged forward with a snarl and a mouth full of blood and flesh and some of Greenhill's sleeve, his bangs fluttering up to reveal a raw, clumsily-stitched line across his forehead, like something from a lobotomy.

"Ah! That wound is-"

_It looks just like the ones on the creatures aboard the Campania-!_

It was definitely time to call in Sebastian and his magician. Ineffective as she had proven to be in the theories and workings of these creatures, she still had a gun and knew how to use it, and may be useful in case- in case-

_Well._

"Tch!" Ciel ripped off his eyepatch, revealing the contract. "Come! Sebastian!"

He heard the distinctive rush of wind and fabric that was his butler landing behind him, and a newer, uncharacteristic rapid breathing and a quiet squeak, which meant that Miss Thompson had been brought along as well. Good.

"Mister Michaelis?!" Bluer gasped as he ran towards Greenhill, to help Violet, Redmond, and Edward, who were one and all trying and failing to pull away the voracious Derrick as he gnawed persistently on the prefect's arm.

"Sebastian, I command you! Apprehend Derrick!"

Sebastian stepped away, towards the table, and seized the pristine white cloth. "Yes, my lord."

Within the space of a heartbeat, he had whisked that sheer fabric away out from under all the plates, pots, and cutlery, leaving the fags gasping and staring as their prefects continued to struggle with Derrick. Sebastian then leapt up into the air, pulling the tablecloth with him.

"It is unbecoming of an English gentleman to disregard etiquette…at a tea party!" he drawled, preforming another of his superhuman feats of speed that left Derrick tied up in a cocoon of the tablecloth, a visual that reminded Ciel uncomfortably of a corpse shroud tied tight to prevent its inmate from escaping.

Come to think, that was exactly what it was.

"M-my arm…!" Greenhill cried weakly, clutching the gaping bloody wound that had resulted from Derrick's mouth as his fag lunged to support him.

"Greenhill!"

Thompson stepped up beside him, and as Ciel cut a glance sideways, he saw that her eyes were fixed on the Green House prefect as Harcourt darted around the table to aid in his wound dressing, an uncomfortable look on her face. That was the issue with using pawns without proper training and experience: they got close to their targets.

"I will see to your injury presently." Sebastian said as he landed on both feet and Derrick Arden landed on his face, thumping to the ground limply like a true corpse instead of whatever he had become. Sebastian knelt over the gasping prefect and slid down his tie, jerking it tight in a knot around Greenhill's arm above the wound, making the prefect cry out.

"He bit away quite a bit…" Sebastian looked up at Edward. "Raise his arm."

"Y-yes, all right."

"What is Mister Michaelis doing here?!" Harcourt cried, raising his hands to his chest.

"What on earth is going on?!" Clayton demanded.

Vice Headmaster Agares mumbled something to himself, catching Sebastian's gaze as the demon half-turned while standing, before slowly making his way over to Ciel and the magician. Now that eyes would be upon him again, Ciel hastily redonned his eyepatch, taking a breath to center himself.

"Mister Michaelis…no, I should say, _Sebastian_ , is my butler. Miss-ter, Thompson here is a business partner."

He frowned a little in annoyance at his own near misstep: the girl's disguise was good, he had to admit, but as she'd mumbled to him at some point before he'd left for the school, the illusions she could master were visual only. The lines of her face were mostly unchanged, her hair and eyes the same color, so someone who was less of a perfectionist than he was might admit it was natural to fall back on habit while he referred to her.

"Our tutor is a butler?!" Harcourt gasped.

"HUNH!?" Cheslock cried.

"I've been promoted from mere branch manager, I see." Thompson mumbled under her breath in that disconcertingly deeper voice, a smirk curling in her tone. Ciel would have to have a much-belated discussion with her later about the tone of a situation and how she was not to interrupt when he was making a play.

"And I came to this school to look into the fate of Derrick and his friends. However…even a devil of a butler like Sebastian would never have been able to ascertain their whereabouts." Ciel continued as a wind blew across the garden, stirring a few loose petals from the flowers and table and sending them tumbling through the air. " _Because Derrick was already long dead_."

All eyes were drawn to the corpse in his cocoon as he groaned and began to twitch a little.

"Already dead? What are you saying?" Harcourt quavered. "He's still moving, don't you s-"

"Hul…lo…" Derrick rattled as he brought his head around a little, chewing mindlessly on the cloth and flesh in his mouth as his voice slurred and ebbed. "I detect…the wonderful aroma…of teeea…"

"Eep!" Harcourt gasped, stepping away.

"Now." Ciel pulled his M1903 Hammerless from his pocket, aiming it with a _chak_ down the table. "I'd like to hear an explanation from you, Headmaster!"

Thompson moved to copy him, which was good to note for later reference. Ciel's suspicions had hardened into near certainty when now, even now, the Headmaster remained still, silent, and motionless. It wasn't shock or lack of knowledge.

It was indifference.

"Phantomhive, what's gotten into y-"

"Clayton!" Edward cut off his fellow fag. "Don't challenge Ciel…no. Don't defy Earl Phantomhive!"

"Wha-"

"Dash it!" Cheslock ground out. "Will someone tell me what's goin' on?!"

"I've seen transformed humans like Derrick before." Ciel ground out before Thompson could chip in with one of her obnoxious statements, moving to hold his pistol with both hands. "Tell me! What have you done to him!"

There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the soft _whoosh_ of wind and the slow, ominous _click_ of Thompson releasing the safety on her own gun.

"We…" Greenhill mumbled, perhaps prompted by the sound, perhaps too heavy with guilt to remain silent. "…only wanted to protect…"

"To protect?" Sebastian asked from Ciel's other side.

"Saint George, the symbol of our college, is said to have slain a dragon that jeopardized the peace in order to protect his country." Bluer said, and pushed his glasses up his nose with a single finger. "In short, one cannot avert disaster without striking down the source of it. We simply abided by that teaching. And so…we dealt with Derrick –and killed him."

He looked sideways, towards his fellow prefects.

"Greenhill would have been accused with murder if the rest of us had not done anything. Redmond's uncle had contact with some sort of hospital…the head arrived with his research partner."

Ciel did not have to hear Thompson's soft, swift inhale of breath to know that something was deeply, terribly wrong. He felt it prickle along his skin, raising the hair on his arms –something was wrong here, and it was something they knew.

"No…" he swallowed. "It can't be-"

"And so we made a pact." Redmond continued implacably. "With _him_."

"I see." Sebastian purred out the words. "Now all the pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place. The student who disappeared, along with his soul –Derrick Arden. The man who eluded a devil's pursuit –the Headmaster. The secret organization that experiments with the revival of human bodies –the Aurora Society. Each of them, minor incidents of little consequence. The one who made a labyrinth of them…" He drew up his arm to point at the silent figure sitting at the head of the able. "-is you."

The students and prefects all gasped.

"This has nothing to do with the Headmaster!" Redmond cried. "We prefects took it upon ourselves to-"

"I never said the Headmaster was involved." Sebastian said implacably, red beginning to flicker beneath his hooded eyelids. "Well? What do you say we both drop our school acts?"

The Headmaster was silent for a moment –then _grinned_ , baring teeth that were a bit…too… _pointed_. "Alaaas!"

The students began to murmur as Ciel's heart began to pound.

"I did quite enjoy this profession, I'll have you know. I watched your most delightful struggles from the grand tier." the "headmaster" added, pointing a single finger at him as Sebastian stepped closer and held out an arm, protective. "Once again you bestowed upon me the choicest of laughter, seeeee?"

Ciel's heart was thumping faster and harder with every moment as the "headmaster" let out a cracked giggle that was far too familiar, taking the brim of his top hat in hand and lifting it up as a cascade of silver-white hair spilled out, some strands braided and the others falling loose about his shoulders.

"Its you…Undertaker!"

Thompson whistled softly under her breath, but remained firm of stance as she shifted her feet a little, drawing closer to Ciel as well.

Undertaker, for his part, seemed unperturbed that two guns were pointed at him, slouched casually in his chair as he spun the concealing top hat around his hand. "Whyyy, hello there, milord~! I see you're as undersized as ever." he drawled cheerfully. "I'm pleased to see you looking so well. Have you enjoyed your first taste of the communal life? Hee-hee!"

Recognizing that shooting the man would be absolutely useless, Ciel lowered his gun. Thompson did not –but then again, she had access to magic Ciel did not, and may be able to ensure her bullets caused damage. Or, perhaps, she was just comforted by the fact she had a gun out: all three of them, Ciel, Sebastian, and herself, knew that the demon would not hasten his steps one jot to aid her unless Ciel explicitly commanded it, and thus her protection against the mad Grim Reaper in this situation was much less secure.

"I was wondering where you had run off to after closing up shop." Sebastian commented, nearly as calm as the Reaper. "I never imagined you would have secured work at a school of all places."

Undertaker cackled softly to himself as he plopped the top hat back onto his head. "Well, I am but a temporary tutor~!"

"My word." Sebastian scoffed quietly. "Our investigation into a handful of runaways has taken a most outrageous turn." He glanced towards the prefects, who had remained frozen, stunned, all throughout this exchange. "You four prefects murdered Mister Derrick, and then you commissioned the Aurora Society to bring him back to life. What did you wish to protect so badly that would force you to resort to such measures?"

Lawrence Bluer sighed. "He- Derrick Arden was an individual who should never have been at this school." he said tersely.

Ciel narrowed his eyes, sensing that they were _finally_ making progress. "In what sense?"

"Well, you see…" Bluer began, glancing aside as he mustered his thoughts. Some time after we had become prefects, we heard rumors of bullying. All students must be equal under the Headmaster, and Derrick Arden, who was Redmond's fag at the time, volunteered to look into it. The lineage of a marquise, a cheerful personality, an overabundance of talents –Derrick Arden shone bright indeed. And so we failed to notice it…the darkest of shadows that spawned from that light."

"Derrick found nothing, and would have us believe that the reports of bullying were errant nonsense." Redmond said, picking up the thread of the story. "But some time after he had begun and ended his search in failure, the prefects received a poem. _'Thor, the god of thunder, lay down beside a clear lake./His torch nearby, he listened to the song of a lyre made of irregularly-shaped pearls plucked by a gracious apostle…/…when a mischievous elf appeared, tossing the torch into the water./The flames of the torch were then no more, and the lake brimmed with stars./The beautiful lake became a legend with the power to heal…/…but the god whose light was stolen away continues to wander blindly in the night.'_ Derrick could not interpret the poem, but I noticed something."

Redmond sighed, chafed his arm as though he was cold. "There was a message cleverly interwoven into that poem, a date and time that must have been a summons to us prefects. Thor, god of thunder, is the origin of the word Thursday. Gracious apostle could only mean John the Apostle, whose Hebrew name means "The Lord is Gracious." The lyre of irregularly-shaped pearls must have meant Baroque music, and the John of Baroque music is Johann Sebastian Bach, of whom there is a bust in our music room. The extinguished torch was a reference to lights out."

"Impressive that you figured all that out, then." Thompson said blandly, and a smile flickered on and off of Redmond's face, as though she had reminded him of something.

"All the important words were written in indigo ink, though they appeared black at first glance. In any case, someone had gone to extreme effort to secretly contact the prefects and summon us to the music room after lights out on Thursday, and we thought it prudent to attend. The one thing I couldn't make out was the last line…the light that was stolen away." His lips drew tight. "We found out soon enough. Derrick Arden and his associates were there…and they were tormenting their fellow students."

"The meaning of "whose light was stolen away" was this." Violet continued when Redmond found himself unable to speak, voice harsh. "All of Derrick Arden's splendid achievements were false. Cricket. Embroidery. Term papers. Songwriting. _Everything_. He had stolen the talents of other students by way of despicable methods to make himself shine…and he had been doing this for four years –ever since the day he enrolled."

"He showed no remorse." Greenhill wheezed out, teeth gritted from something other than pain as Edward stared at him, clutching the prefect's arm as he kept it raised at Greenhill's shoulder level. "He told us –he was blowing off _steam_. That he loathed being placed in Weston, and that -that as his father made significant contributions to the school, he hoped we would "allow" him to continue doing as he'd done. Not only no remorse, but no…no care for his fellow students. He acted as though he thought himself untouchable, and we soon found out why."

There was a pause as he gathered his strength for another spate of words, blood seeping out around the bandages on his arm.

"Even the Vice Headmaster was hand in glove with Derrick." he continued, hands clenched. "What could we do? How could we stop them? It wasn't right. The tradition of this school would continue to be undermined as long as they were here."

"We couldn't allow that." Violet mumbled. "Because…"

" _Tradition is absolute_." Bluer finished firmly. "You know the rest –as you said, we killed Derrick and his accomplices and commissioned Rian Stoker and this fellow here to reanimate them. We have done their loved ones wrong, to be sure…be we had no other alternative in order to protect tradition and order." Bluer pushed his glasses up his nose again as they flashed over white in the soft glow of the candles and lanterns. "We did not wish to bring disgrace to this school by ruffling feathers. Surely you understand, Phantomhive?"

"How can you say that…when you've taken their lives?" Ciel asked, agog. Certainly he understood the _motive_ for murder: plain, simple, and clean, the desire to remove a source of harmful contagion from their society. That was as maybe. But to be so rigidly devoted to this college…to say it was for the purpose of preserving a tradition of a place of _schoolchildren_ …that, _that_ was appalling. It was like if Thompson actually _was_ a branch manager of his and she worshipped some lollipop confectionary of Funtom's, and killed in its name. It bridged the gap between absurdity and horror and left disgust in its wake.

For most, at least.

"Pfft! Gyaaah-ha-ha-ha! This is moooost amusing!" Undertaker cackled, rocking back in his chair as two of its legs tipped off the ground. "I have been gifted with more laughter than I deserve! Bfft! Hee-hee-hee-hee!" The Grim Reaper rattled the chair back and forth, side to side, as he wiggled and writhed in sheer amusement, laughing into the appalled silence, before finally gasping out his last shout of laughter and hunching forward again as the chair legs tapped back onto the ground. "Human beings…are supremely tragic…supremely absurd…and supremely delightful!"

Sebastian huffed out a short laugh of his own. "Oh? How curious. For once, I must say I agree with you there."

The students were all, undoubtably, baffled by this apparently-inscrutable conversation between faux-Headmaster and butler, but Lawrence Blue picked up his courage after a moment and tried to explain himself once more.

"This school is a respected institution that has produced elites who form the mainstay of Great Britain. Our generation cannot afford to defile the tradition that has been protected for hundreds of years since the founding of this school. For this history of Weston College…is the history of England!" he cried.

 _A razor-thin line separates education and brainwashing. They act as if they're slaves to tradition._ Ciel sighed. _It's a waste of time to argue them into silence since they've been this way for six years._

"Fine." he scoffed, to the apparent surprise of Sebastian. "I was investigating this incident…under the orders of a certain distinguished personage. I can't keep silent now that I've uncovered the truth. However…"

Blast it, how had that wretched Doll boy done it? A bright, shiny smile…

Ciel did his best to emulate the same. "I shall request measures that take your circumstances into account."

Sebastian huffed quietly through his nose as Thompson, always much less subtle, snorted.

Ciel was also going to have to add that to his lecture: _do not act in manners contradictory to my façade no matter how amusing you find it._

"Now. That just leaves you. What are you after?!" he demanded of Undertaker.

"Hee-hee! You have just bestowed upon me plenty of laughter, so I will explain for old times' sake."

Ciel narrowed his eyes. "It was only for a moment, but Derrick was conscious beyond a doubt. He was clearly different from the previous reanimated corpses…no. He has evolved!"

Undertaker finished munching on a parfait. "It pleases me to hear that!" he said with one final gulp. "Quite so. The dead can also advance...by way of episodes."

"Episodes?" Sebastian probed. "Do you mean the counterfeit memories you have created? Connecting them to the Cinematic Records of the dead was how the corpses began moving."

"Guess again." Undertaker huffed with a pout, crossing both hands in front of his chin in an X. "You're close, though. Those memories were gibberish. The current corpses are being moved by their longing for the future. Humans recall their pasts in their final moments. That is their Cinematic Record. At the same time, they crave the futures they were to have had…although those futures are incomplete." He lowered his hands with a grin. "The fragments of those futures comprise their episodes. What if those episodes could be extracted? What if several tens of thousands of cuts can be had? What if the total length of the linked episodes was longer than their Cinematic Records? Its akin to a future forecast. They are memories of the future, nothing like my counterfeit memories. If I connect such a thing to a Cinematic Record –do you not agree that what will be perfected is a reanimated corpse infinitely approaching a living human?"

Ciel shivered.

"Well," Undertaker continued with a blithe shrug. "-the probability of success is still very very low, as it is dependent on the quantity and quality of the episodes."

"Ah." Thompson said from beside him in a tone of quiet understanding. Undertaker's bright green eyes flashed in her direction.

"The young magician should be able to comprehend this even if it isn't her specialtyyyy~" he teased, and Thompson frowned and shifted on her feet again, seemingly uncomfortable.

"It does explain why Derrick walked past all the others and only –broke," she faltered. "-when he got to Greenhill. What, was he the one to kill him or something? That'd- that'd make the part where you spliced things together get all weird, 'cause his last memory would've been…dying. You know." She gulped. "And then he'd see the ones that killed him."

Undertaker cackled as Ciel felt a small twist in his stomach. That was…macabre, to say the least.

And true, apparently, as the Grim Reaper grinned his answer.

"Not bad, for an apprentice!" he cheered, making a bead of disgruntled sweat slide down Thompson's altered jaw. "Not bad, not bad at aaaaall…"

"But why do this in the first place!?" Ciel demanded, taking back the conversation as he jabbed his gun at the Reaper with both hands. "Where is the sense in bringing back the dead?!"

What was the _point_ , he screamed inside. Dead was dead: Sebastian had taught him that, in that terrible series of moments in which he was orphaned from his last shred of family and the demon had yet to own a true name in the human world. He knew what it was like to have a creature without a soul: one stood on his right hand, and despite how aggravatingly boisterous and crass she could be, _despite_ her position as a wielder of magic, he did not mean Thompson. One could reduce a human to components –a soul, a body, a Cinematic Record– but the fact remained that they were creatures of _all_ those parts for a _reason_. One day, his soul would be collected by the demon as part of the contract and cease to exist, and on that day, Ciel vowed to give a final order that his husk be burnt to ash afterwards.

He would not leave a puppet behind for Undertaker to operate, no ghostly echo of himself that would wander in the world.

Ciel saw enough of that in the mirror, with or without his eyepatch.

"I…" Undertaker hummed, tilting the brim of his hat up with one finger. "-simply want to look beyond the fated end."

"Beyond…the end?"

The Reaper stretched luxuriously. "Has it never occurred to you that something exceedingly amusing may unfold beyond the roll of credits?"

"I disagree with you on that point." Sebastian said with the detached air of a connoisseur. "Death is a hopeless and absolute 'end.' That is why I find it…most beautiful."

Undertaker smirked. "This is all I can tell you with the compensation I have received." he then said languidly, rising in a single movement. "Well, then."

He doffed his top hat as he turned in a mockery of courtesy. "It would be a nuisance if certain bothersome individuals were to discover my whereabouts. So I shall be going now."

"I won't let you escape again!" Ciel shouted. "Capture him, Sebastian!"

"As you wish!"

* * *

Sebastian lunged forward, but it seemed as though the Undertaker would not let him have his way: the Vice Headmaster lunged to intercept, hands curling over Sebastian's own to hold him in place.

"So, you were a corpse as well, Vice Headmaster Agares! That must be why I felt a sense of discomfort then…"

How infinitely annoying. If he were allowed to access his true form, instead of this humanoid… _container_ , he could easily keep the corpse pinned in place while allocating some of his mass to swallow and engulf the Grim Reaper. Goodness, he could individually pick up and carry each of the meddlesome humans over the roof of the church and let them drop –or not– as his master commanded, to safety or otherwise.

But alas, the young master had not commanded, and had also given the order to appear as human as possible at all times. Certainly, Sebastian had enjoyed bending this command on multiple petty occasions, such as when he had disturbed the magician earlier this day, but his aesthetics would not allow for such a _blatant_ defiance of an order given as stated in the contract.

He did have some standards.

"That one is replete with episodes and is my crowning masterpiece." Undertaker said as he landed atop the outer wall. "For now."

With a snap of his fingers, the ground erupted as multiple other corpses surged up out of the looser earth –a detail Sebastian had noticed earlier, but not seen fit to mention. Corpses were hard _not_ to notice: the smell of decay and the complex bouquet of odors tied to it, the scent of a human body, the lingering sense of a place where sustenance had been (likely the same as a human smelling the fumes from prepared food), and, as he was quickly starting to learn, the faint prickling sense of a soul that was not a soul, the psychic echo of the manipulations of Cinematic Records.

So yes, he'd known the picturesque tea party was surrounded by a ring of buried corpses, still not quite into decay. He hadn't said a word, of course, because –well, the young master had not commanded it, had he? How was Sebastian to know that, perhaps, the quartet of prefects hadn't made a habit of murder, and buried their victims here? Humans did have so many grisly penchants. And it had been so long since he'd properly been among them. Perhaps the violent little beasts had made a casual habit of such things and there was a collection in every schoolyard. How was _he_ to know otherwise?

And though he loathed to even acknowledge the magician's existence in thought, she did have a point in that his young master should learn, sooner rather than later, that he was not infallible, even with a devil such as himself at the child earl's side. Having a swarm of rotting un-dead creatures rise up from nothing in an attempt to tear him apart would be an excellent motivator for the young master to learn to rely on his demonic servant's senses more.

The wide eyes of the magician, who had apparently _not_ sensed the bodies in any way whatsoever, as she frantically stepped closer to his master, face pale, was just a pleasant bonus.

Barely had the corpses broke out of the ground, however, before the Vice Headmaster whipped his arms around Sebastian's back, making him glance down in annoyance. Fragile though the corpses may be, this one was irritatingly strong. A human may find such inhuman strength horrifying: as it was, Sebastian was dreadfully inconvenienced.

"These are Derrick's accomplices!" the young master gasped as the corpses lurched forward. Sebastian resisted the urge to sigh: his master did vary between the strangest extremes. From a sobbing infant to an icily controlled mastermind…that summoning had been quite eventful. True, the boy had just watched his own flesh and blood, his very identical twin, be murdered in front of him, but since he'd also –deliberately or otherwise– offered that selfsame twin's soul as a sacrifice to summon a demon, Sebastian figured the boy did not get to complain of his grief. One did not spit on the Almighty and offer one's one blood as a sacrifice to the infernal forces on _accident_.

One could only hope that further cultivation erased such soft tendencies from the boy's makeup. He was young. He had decades to grow. Sebastian could wring out the more unpalatable parts of his personality long before it came time for the boy to be devoured, he was sure of it.

"Chrrrristmas…break…"

"Let's play…crrrrrricket…"

"Run!" the Lord Midford cried, hoisting his half-unconscious prefect up and staggering towards the open garden door. Oh, he had best scream to his fellow humans: he had been on the _Campania_ , he knew these corpses all too well. "Leave this garden now! Hurry!"

With wails and cries of fear –extraordinarily foolish, predators were attracted to sound and movement– the group of humans all fled for the doors, all except the magician and his master, who retreated more slowly, and without words, as she put her gun to work and began covering the young master. Very commendable.

Sebastian noticed she did not shoot at the Vice Headmaster, though whether that was out of dislike for himself –not unlikely– or she feared an errant shot might take _his_ head, that was unclear. It wasn't like she didn't know he could survive it…but ah, she may be afraid of future retaliation.

How droll.

It seemed, also, that one human had not decided to flee with the rest, and was pathetically attempting to crawl backwards as a Bizarre Doll loomed about him, shoulders and back already pressing against the table. He was due to die in a few moments: squeaky words escaped him as he vocalized his own paralysis, flinching back as the Doll mumbling about cricket pulled back slightly in preparation for a lunge. Sebastian recognized him as one of the students that had assisted the young master in his investigations by providing testimony of being tricked by that other boy, and took further, disapproving note that his master was lunging forward to grab the boy's wrist and pull him up and away, banging his hip harshly against the side of the table and jostling a teacup set at its edge as the Doll lunged and missed. Honestly, even with Thompson beside him to shoot the offending creature, what a pointlessly risky move.

"Come with me!"

"Hee-hee!" Undertaker seemed to share his amusement and his observations, a quality Sebastian disliked. "He may have inherited the Phantomhive blood, but he's quite unlike his predecessors…what a riot this is!"

"My, you are quite carefree about all this." the demon commented, ignoring the corpse attached to him as the Doll did its best to strangle him, for some strange reason, the crushing grip around his torso growing tighter and tighter in a way that would've broken bones and slowly pulped flesh. Since the human witnesses were practically gone, Sebastian wasn't really bothering to manifest and copy his human body that closely: the general shape and as much of the face and neck as showed above his collar was enough. "Do you believe you can stop me with something like this? How dare you underestimate me like that."

The Grim Reaper bared his usual carefree grin: Sebastian was not fooled by it. In humans, a grin was a sign of merriment, of positivity, usually. Sometimes it was used in sarcasm, or as a threat, but as part and parcel of the expression of a smile, humans, in their woeful ignorance, took a grin as a sign of pleasure.

In all other animals, bared teeth meant a challenge of aggression, an invitation or a declaration of battle.

"I've never underestimated you. All that sets us apart…" Undertaker said as the teacup on the edge of the table, wobbled, then tipped, tea sloshing out as it was sent falling, falling. The Grim Reaper cut his eyes sideways. "-are our goals."

_Is he-_

The teacup would shatter in a blink, and Sebastian could flip his impediment over and crush its skull in another blink as the Undertaker's coat swished out to reveal those inscribed sticks, and he could go to attack, but the Grim Reaper was agile and could avoid his blows just as well as Sebastian could avoid his –and it was only a short hop and a bound towards his young master, protected only by an utterly useless magician who was not even fully trained and had a repertoire of less than five spells she could reliably cast.

_This is not good! At this distance he is closer to the young master than I! Then…_

It took less than a blink for this thought process to complete, and then the cup shattered, and Sebastian flipped the Vice Headmaster over his head, smashing his skull into the pavement and crushing it in another blink –and ran for the young master.

_…my first priority is to protect my contractor!_

The Undertaker grinned as he bounded past in midair –in the opposite direction.

"Just what I'd expect from you, Master Butler." he said with a chuckle. Sebastian threw him a glare of utter distaste, and the Undertaker responded by turning his grin into a leer.

How bothersome, to be manipulated in such a fashion. Still, that didn't mean his decision had no merit: Sebastian had no illusions of what the Reaper would have done had he chosen to attack instead.

"Sebastian?!" the young master gasped as he skidded to a halt beside him and the other two humans, glaring up at the Grim Reaper as he landed on the wall, standing beneath the rising crescent moon.

"I do hope you'll continue to protect milord so loyally." Undertaker's mouth split in his initial empty leer, back when his characteristic eyes had been covered by shaggy bangs and he had been nothing but an eccentric information dealer, raising both arms as if to cradle the moon above his head. "Hee-hee! Fare! Thee! Well!"

A spark of light, and he was gone, and Sebastian relaxed infinestably.

"Hey, Sebas-"

He cut the earl off with a raised arm and a sharp command. "Stay behind me!"

A more rotund Doll lunged for him, and he palmed its forehead and shoved backwards.

"Sebastian! Why did you come to me! I ordered you to seize-"

Another moment of idiocy. Sebastian could only pray he'd wrangle that out of the earl's personality _soon_.

"By the terms of our covenant, your life is my first priority." he said, temper somewhat getting the best of him as the bone of the Doll's head began to crack and fracture under the pressure of his fingers. "I have gone to great pains to cultivate you." Impatiently, he crushed the skull under his hand in its entirety, flashing his eyes at the young master to impress upon him his seriousness. "I cannot afford to have you steal him away."

This method was slightly messy, and blood streaked across the earl's face as the boy behind him fainted and the magician, oddly enough, made a face and rubbed her mouth with the back of her wrist. Ah, right. There had been some spitting and gasping beneath his feet whilst he dealt with the Bizarre Dolls on that lifeboat: she had probably gotten some residue in her mouth.

Pity he hadn't been able to directly see it.

She then swarmed to catch the slighter boy as his young master stared. "Ah! Hey!"

"Kid! You okay?!"

"You should let him sleep." Sebastian commented as he let the body drop with a messy _splat_. "There is still much cleaning to be done…in the wake of this tea party."

_Arya's POV:_

It took Herculean effort not to say "ew" as I gingerly stepped among the various now-dead undead Bizarre Dolls, some time after the prefects and the others had evacuated. They, and their blood, was _everywhere_ : one was even draped over the table near where the Headmaster/Undertaker had sat.

It was a bit weird though, all the blood. The Dolls before had, from my memory, didn't have a lot of blood as such: maybe enough for a bit of a spray, more of a sprinkle, when their heads were crushed or their limbs torn off, and it had all seemed very thin and…chemically. This stuff was thinner than normal blood, sure, but it was still surprisingly viscous, profuse, and as I may have mentioned, _everywhere_. It was enough to put me right off the tea that still steamed in some cups on the table, and all the yummy parfaits and other delicacies that were otherwise disarranged or covered in an unappetizing layer of gore and yuck.

Sebastian was even stripping his gloves and putting on new ones, which you knew was significant because the last time he'd had to do that, the Bizarre Dolls had been a real zombie horde, and here there were barely a dozen, if that. It'd been hard to count amongst the jolts of the fear and the ill lighting: after the others had gotten out, I'd just shot at anything that wasn't me or Ciel and tried to avoid catching Sebastian as he zipped everywhere in a rapid black blur.

"Dear me." Ciel sighed as he wiped his arm across his face, removing the spatter of blood on his cheek. "How am I going to explain all this to Her Majesty?"

"Why not give her all the facts as they are?" Sebastian asked, tugging his second glove on straight. "Tell her that 'a perverse, erstwhile Grim Reaper is reanimating the dead'."

"She'll never believe-" Ciel began as he holstered his own gun, to be interrupted by running footsteps.

"Ciel!" Edward cried as he slammed the door open again, sword in his other hand. "Everyone's escaped safely…"

He stopped, stumbled, and nearly fell as his foot whacked against the skull of one of the downed Dolls, who had been stumbling in the vague direction of the door before one of us had taken care of it.

"We're done here too. Watch your step." Ciel noticed sardonically, and Edward made a face, lifting his foot out of the puddle of blood.

"…I will."

He was silent for a moment, stepping carefully over the corpse and taking in the scene with white, compressed lips. For a moment he didn't speak, but then he sighed as though the very act of exhaling pained him.

"Ciel. It frightens me to no end…that I might have ended up…like those prefects too." Edward's sword hand shook, his whole _body_ shook as he raised it up to grab the sheathe in both hands. "That I might've become a man who deludes himself into thinking that…the sin of murder is equal to justice."

Ciel smirked. "Don't worry. Consider yourself normal if it scares you so." he said as he turned away. "Unlike me."

* * *

_In the aftermath, Ciel told the Queen everything. The punishment meted out to the four prefects was expulsion, not imprisonment._

_It was not a show of mercy. Rather, the expulsion was to suppress a scandal involving a blood relative of the Queen, who lost his life due to his own troubles. Their comeuppance may indeed have been crueler than death to the prefects, since they chose the traditions of the school over human lives._

_According to Ciel, the disappearances of Derrick Arden and those other bastards that were his accomplices were explained away as accidental deaths from a boating mishap, and their corpses were buried in secret. All parties involved, aka all the fags, were sworn to secrecy, and Ciel and I dropped out of Weston._

_However, there was one small thing that nagged me, and I made sure to complete it before we left for the Phantomhive estate._

* * *

I sighed and plucked at the loose, lacy short sleeves of my dress. After some months wearing pants, it was both annoying and reassuring to go back to skirts. Sure, it made one feel wonderfully fancy, but trousers were so much cooler, and it was tending towards hotter weather nowadays, being June and whatnot. At least my hair was still short, and as something of an oblique…hint, I guessed, to avoid any more explaining than I had to, I was wearing one of those off-the-shoulder frothy dresses Miss Nina had sewn for me, something that made it clear _beyond any shadow of a doubt_ that I had both bosom and cleavage. Or was that the same thing? Bosom seemed to convey the entire area of the bust…

Anyways, female. No more illusion, no more magic fiddling with my vocal cords, just me, a girl with disconcertingly short hair and an incongruous wide summer hat on my head, and a supply kit of that satchel Ciel had lent me dangling stylishly off one bare shoulder.

I'd already rung the doorbell, and I fidgeted awkwardly on the steps, reaching to play with the edges of my cotton finger-bandages before I remembered I _finally_ had cast them off and my pink, freshly-healed nails were exposed to the world, finally resorting to fiddling with my sleeve some more as I rubbed my bare hand against my upper arm.

Granted, this was a house under siege at the moment, probably, by newspapers and relatives and lord knew what else, but still. To leave a lady on the doorstep like this…oh god their mindset was rubbing off on me.

My distressed squeak was, unfortunately, something that happened at the same moment the door warily cracked open. Was that a sign? Was the universe fucking with me?

In either case, I prepared a bright smile and waited for awkward as Lawrence Bluer's glasses glinted at me behind the crack in the door.

"Ryan Thomp…son…?"

It was, of course, automatic: he saw the face he knew, and reacted, and then his eyes moved, caught on the odd and novel details: the frilliness of my feminine hat, the odd bright colors of my clothes, and then the slow pan downwards and the widening of eyes as he saw, in order, bare neck, boobs, a dress, and then in rapid reverse order as his eyes shot back up to my face and his own face turned red.

"What- why are- you- in a dress?!" he yelped, and I quickly stuck my foot in the door before he could slam it shut.

"Yes, technically I am, or was, Ryan Thompson, and not his identical twin sister." I rattled off quickly. I knew Shakespeare, I wasn't about to let Bluer go off on _that_ tangent. "Can I come in?"

"I, er, you do realize-"

"Perfect."

Relying on Victorian manners was a bit of a dirty tactic, but when I shoved against the door, crowding him, his options for refusing to open fell to one of two things: rudely denying a lady entry and leaving her on his doorstep, or having a lady in a saucily frilly dress be right up close in his personal space.

Caving like a stack of cards, Bluer swiftly stepped back, opening the door.

"Sorry to barge in like this." I said breezily, stepping into the townhouse the prefects had been allegedly sheltering in these past few days as they pieced their lives back together. "But it's a bit urgent."

"You- you're a…female?"

I raised an eyebrow as I bustled down the hall, catching a glimpse of more bodies in an adjoining room, probably a living room or sitting room or something similar. Bluer caught my gaze and tentatively moved to block me, obviously not wanting any more scrutiny or shame to come to him or his friends. They'd endured enough of that these past few days, I was sure.

"Yup. The name's Arya, actually. I'm here to see Greenhill." I said brusquely, pushing past him. My former prefect was sitting gloomily in a plushy chair, staring into the flames of a cozy fire, his arm wrapped in a sling. He looked up at me, noted the dress and the bosom, and a confused and slightly horrified expression crossed his face.

"RYAN?!"

"Arya, apparently." Violet noted clinically from behind me from where he lounged on a settee against the wall, doodling moodily and with aggressive movements on a sketch pad. I gave the P4 – P3, actually, since Redmond was absent– an awkward smile.

"Uh, yeah. I, um…I'm here to see Greenhill about his arm." I said, and the bulkier blond flinched, looking down at his perfectly shined shoes hopelessly.

"I…appreciate the gesture, but the doctors said I'd never play cricket again. I'll be lucky to retain the use of it for ordinary tasks." he muttered gloomily, and I smirked.

_Time to show what several months of frantic studying gets you._

"I'm not a doctor." I said confidently, chucking my supply kit on the floor. "But I've got a few tricks up my sleeve that doctors don't."

Greenhill looked at me uncertainly for a few seconds, before he gave me a terse nod. "Do your best." he said wearily, not even bothering to question my change of attire –not to mention gender.

Bluer looked at me skeptically, and I raised an eyebrow as I saw the faint pink in his cheeks. "Just...why on earth are you wearing a dress?" he asked awkwardly as I knelt beside Greenhill and began undoing his sling.

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm a female." I said dryly as I pulled the wrappings away, and winced at the sight of my former prefect's arm. It was painfully obvious that a large hunk of flesh had been ripped away and hastily given first aid, and the stitches there were thick and ugly.

"He said as much, but –you were helping Phantomhive all along, weren't you?" Violet asked bluntly, and I grunted an affirmative.

"I'm a manager for a branch of his company –I also know a few tricks that he finds useful in his investigations." I said, pulling out the wrapping I had prepared earlier and laying it on my knee. "As Weston College is an all-boys school, I had to disguise myself, and the earl thought it'd be better not to place all his eggs in one basket, which was the reason I played up the sports side of my personality."

"That's breaking tradition." Bluer said stiffly, and I snorted quietly.

"Not to burst your bubble, but you got thrown out of the school because you valued tradition over someone's life." I said acidly, and they all flinched. As the awkward silence lingered, I took out my pocketknife and began cutting the stitches on Greenhill's arm, pulling them out as he winced just barely. "Not to say that the bastards didn't exactly deserve it, but still. You could've handled that better." I said, unintentionally falling into a "lecture" tone of voice despite the fact these boys were as old or older than I was. "You what, were gonna report it to the Headmaster? Could've just done that. Or reported it to Arden's father: he probably wouldn't've taken it well. Talked to your parents, the newspapers, even. Informed the whole damn world and let society do the rest."

"That looks like some kind of arcane sigil." Greenhill interrupted nervously, staring at the pentacle inked out on the scarf-like fabric laid across my knee.

"That's exactly what it is, as a matter of fact." I said without expression, pulling the last few stitches from his arm.

"Magic is an impossibility." Bluer said stuffily from his spot by the doorway, but before I could retort –and to my surprise– Violet answered for me.

"You believe in reanimating the dead, but not magic?" he sneered, still somehow deadpan, and Bluer flushed as I wrapped the fabric around Greenhill's arm, closing my eyes and gripping his arm over the wound as I began to murmur in Greek.

"Listen, Ry- Arya." Greenhill began skeptically, his face slightly flushed as he corrected himself. "I appreciate the gesture, but there's no way a drawing and some prayers will...help..."

Violet and Bluer shifted worriedly as the former head of Green House slowly trailed off, his eyes growing huge. "Greenhill?" Bluer prompted in concern, and my former prefect blinked once.

"My arm's gone numb." he whispered incredulously, and the corners of my mouth crept slightly upward as I kept whispering the incantation, but continuing to chant was vital to this actually _working_ , so I didn't respond. I could feel the familiar thrill and electric tingle of energy in my hands and fingertips as the magic flowed through me, and I tightened my grip as Greenhill suddenly shifted, both of us noticing the same thing at once.

The missing flesh under my fingers was beginning to fill out.

"That's _impossible_." Greenhill whispered to himself, his face ashen, and I waited until his wound seemed more or less level with the rest of his arm before stopping my incantation and letting go.

"Welcome to the world of the impossible, then." I said dryly. "I didn't heal it all the way –you'll have scars– and to be fair that's probably a good thing. Scars can be helpful reminders." I added, pulling the fabric away from his arm. "And if I'm bein' honest, I probably couldn't heal it all the way even if I wanted to."

Greenhill, Bluer, and Violet all stared wordlessly at the pinkish, slightly raised scar on the former prefect's arm that was the only evidence of a formerly gaping, nearly crippling wound. "I know how important a good batting arm is to you, Greenhill." I said, my voiced toned with no small amount of professional pride at my magical accomplishment. "If you stop moping around and start moving forward, you could probably turn it to some good use as a professional cricket player or something. Lord knows you've got the talent for it."

He looked up at me, and for a moment, I swear I saw tears glimmering in his eyes.

"I don't-" he began thickly, in a tone that implied _know how to thank/repay you_ would be coming hard on its heels, and I winced.

"Look," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "Greenhill, I'm not gonna lie and say all my, uh, trying to hang around and bond with you stuff wasn't me trying to worm information out of you, but…I had fun. You're a decent guy- er, _person_."

A smile flickered wanly around his mouth as he recognized one of our first slang exchanges.

"And, you know, I, erm, I don't want you to think I didn't think of you and some of the others as, well, friendly acquaintances and whatnot. I did. We had fun, playing cricket and whatnot."

I tried to offer him a bright smile, but it wavered on the edge of awkward. "So I guess…what I'm trying to say, is no hard feelings, yeah? I'm sorry you had to do what you felt you had to do, but I didn't ever come at you with like, with malice aforethought, okay?"

Greenhill sucked in a slow breath –I had been in a fuzzy sort-of-friend zone, and I _had_ lied to him for months. There was some emotion tied up in this, confusion, betrayal, lingering hopefully-strictly-platonic-affection.

"I suppose." he mumbled, looking down at his miraculously healed arm and flexing it a little. The barest hint of a smile curled at the corner of his mouth. "At least now I know why you were so reluctant to spot in the cricket team."

"Oi!"

And after a bit more slightly-awkward visiting before a hasty escape, that was _that_ chapter of my life tied up in a nice little bow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: March 31st, 2020, 12.45 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: March 31st, 2020, 12.54 PM USA Central Time


	56. That Butler, Gathering & Leafing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel intensely and hypocritically concerned of the read time for some of the people reviewing this on FF. Like yeah, sure, I was writing the chapter at one in the morning, but you were READING it then? Listen mate, you should get some sleep, I say as I do not change my own sleeping pattern at all and continuing staying up even later than that. It's like, I feel an obligation to be concerned for you guys? I give you things to read, which means I'm a provider. I provide things for you. Like a mom does. (Or a mom friend.) And THAT means I'm your internet mom and I say go to bed right now, young individual that may be older than I am. It's a circular train of logic, I know, but my brain has a lot of those. And it's not like its gonna hurt to have one person sending y'all good thoughts and whatnot during these trying times. Hang in there, everyone who does not work in a grocery store like me or can't work from home like my parents.
> 
> Also binge-watching _Supernatural_ so my sister and I can watch the final bit of the final season when it actually airs. Ugh. We're on season 11 of 15, with 50-minute episodes and 20-23 episodes per season. Even during quarantine, its a pain and a slog and a hassle I don't even wanna deal with. I will admit though, that everything that doesn't have to do with Amara/The Darkness is picking up at this point -part of the reason I basically almost hatewatch this show is because the characters never seem to internalize lessons that they've been verbally agonizing back and forth with for THE ENTIRE SHOW TENURE, and nothing good ever happens to anyone, and with how many times they've noped out of killing Sam & Dean and/or giving them normal, peaceful lives, the show writers have kinda painted themselves into a corner with giving them and Castiel ANY kind of definitive ending, because the fans won't buy it no matter where or how they sell it. And if they give the guys a shitty unhappy ending, I just slogged through fifteen fucking seasons of Hurt with not even a particle of Comfort. Which is just -no. Fuck that. Fuck you guys. Fuck everything. No way.
> 
> This pertains to you guys specifically because that's five hours of my day that I WON'T be writing in, so...updates may come slower for a few weeks.

_Arya's POV:_

Although I had been attending some business of my own, Ciel and Sebastian had delayed their immediate return to the Phantomhive Manor as well, largely because of Ciel's need to present an in-person comprehensive report to the queen. However, the carriage showed up at the townhouse just as planned, two glossy brown horses coming to a well-trained stop on the curb, luggage already packed up and all ready to go from its place firmly strapped onto the boot, and I hopped in before we rattled on off back home.

As I took my place opposite them and we clopped through the London traffic, Ciel seemed bored with existence as always, staring out a window with his chin on one hand as he perhaps plotted on what had been going on with Undertaker or his new orders from the queen, and Sebastian, in that freaky demonic way that he did, was perfectly capable of sitting motionless for hours on end without anything to occupy himself and not really focusing on anything with his eyes, an ability he was demonstrating now.

Me, I was finally rummaging around with my magic book/journal. Being at Weston had meant, aside from studying, my magic practice had slipped, since I wasn't willing to risk alerting Undertaker to any hanky-panky going on, and now with the dubious rest of summer vacation stretching on before some other emergency caught Ciel's attention and I may or may not get involved, I had plenty of time to kick into high gear.

I already had at least a solid half of the final pentacle assembled, inasmuch as the qualifier sigils and runes went, and I paged through my list of remaining sigils to acquire, frowning a little as I flipped back and forth between the various diagrams in my book. It wasn't as simple as ABC: some sigils combined with others in odd ways, and I couldn't simply stick everything together into one large rune and go from there. A lot of the mystic signs I was using, things like reflections and glass and mirrors and suchlike, didn't take to the normal "negation" sigil that meant I was disallowing myself from traveling into such locations or materials, which meant I had to use the negation sign congruent to them, which might blend in weird ways with the larger sigil I had to complete before I wove the whole thing into my comprehensive grand master _Black Butler_ rune. Hence, there were a lot of tweaks and twitches I needed to make –and triple-check– before I completed specific components of my master rune, which as you can imagine slowed me down quite a bit. Totally worth it, though, since failing at this would get me magically drawn and quartered or turned inside out or something equally unpleasant and fatal.

"How goes your progress, anyways?"

Ciel's voice suddenly broke in as I flipped back towards my long chain of the vocal part of the spell, and I looked up.

"Pardon?"

He waved one small hand at my notebook languidly. "Your attempts to return to your home dimension." A small smile curved his lips, barely there for a second before it was gone. "Employers do require notice before their employees quit."

"Oh. Ah," I laughed a little and rubbed the back of my distressingly short hair. "I dunno. I mean, I'm getting close, about halfway now, but I found this spell that I think can find me all the other rune components I need, and then it's just a matter of using that to get everything I need and then putting everything together. So…soonish?"

One eyebrow rose. "I shall require warning before you attempt to enact your final ritual." Ciel said after a moment, before settling back. "Which reminds me…"

I winced as his eye suddenly acquired an icy look.

"It is painfully obvious that you have never truly been in a confrontation of some import. In such situations, the tiniest cues and words are of vast importance. I don't care how you botch your own operations, but have a care for mine: _do not_ act contrary to the persona I have built, do not offer your unnecessary snide comments, and do not do anything that disturbs the rhythm of the conversation that I have built up."

I wilted under the force of his implacable rain of words, but Ciel wasn't done yet, not by a long shot.

Thus I was rather more gloomily occupied for the remainder of the journey as Ciel chewed me out for, well, pretty much behaving as I'd pleased for the duration of our confrontation of the Undertaker and the prefects. It wasn't like he was _such_ a micromanager that Ciel wanted me to do nothing unless he told me too, it was more…well, let's be honest, I was still kinda, maybe, a little bit, behaving like I had when I'd been seeing these events play out on a manga page or on a screen. I was still reacting like I was part of the audience, offering chirpy comments and sassing bad decisions, and when you were actually _there_ , on the spot of the things actually happening, that was a bad attitude and message to send to both my allies and my enemies. I was being irresponsible, thoughtlessly allowing my own personal opinions to rise over the prudence of maybe keeping quiet or observing as a peon should be doing in that situation. Sure, nothing bad of it had come so far, but behaving like an independent bystander was a bad habit to get into, especially when I didn't have the firepower to back that attitude up.

In short, I was slacking off in my mental attendance of any given situation involving stuff I'd seen before, and while I got the gist of that fairly quickly, I didn't exactly appreciate being taken to task for it at such length, especially when the one doing the scolding was thirteen years old and barely up to my ribs in height.

I knew he was right. Ooh, I knew he was right.

That didn't make it any more bearable to hear.

So it was a cowed and somewhat sulky silence that we took with us when the carriage rattled over the bridge towards the Phantomhive estates, though I was perking up slightly at the thought of seeing Snake and Mey-rin and all the others again, particularly Snake, as I had picked up some Latin texts during out time at the school that I was almost _sure_ he hadn't read.

I cackled quietly under my breath, rubbing my hands together as my eyes gleamed cartoonishly. Oh, victory would be mine at long last in our contest of literary quotes. Snake would rue the day he challenged me to a battle of bookworms!

Ciel and I jerked in our seats slightly as the carriage came to an abrupt halt, and a prickle ran up my spine. What now?! What manner of ghouls or ghosts or demons or _why can I hear sheep baaing…_

Sebastian glanced out the window, frowned a little, and opened the door, reaching back to help Ciel down and leaving me to fend for myself as I hopped out quickly behind them. There appeared to be a large flock of sheep ambling across the front of the Phantomhive lawn, blocking the road in places and munching hungrily on the fresh green English grass. Mey-rin, Snake, Bardroy, and Finny (as well as Tanaka) were all gathered around the sheep nearest to the manor, apparently attempting to hustle them up.

"Oh! Young master, Mister Sebastian, Miss Thompson, welcome back~!" Finny cried cheerfully as he grappled a sheep around the middle, lifting it halfway off the ground.

"Welcome back –says Emily!" Snake piped.

"Old Man Sam's farm fence seems to have collapsed." Bardroy grunted, trying to heft up another sheep.

"Gyaaah! Don't eat my skirt! Don't, I say!" Mey-rin squealed, trying to tug the hem of her dress away from a sheep who had decided to try something more exotic for its meal.

"Ah! That chap's headed for the herb garden! –says Wilde." Snake blurted as the others looked over to see a sheep bounding happily towards that low boundary wall, and he and Finny took off as I took off after them, the farming instincts in me blaring too strong to ignore. Sure, my family's farm had been distinctly lacking in animals, except for the horses, but we were surrounded by other rural farm folks and I knew how this whole thing worked. It was neighborhood lore and a social obligation.

"Waah, caught you!" Finny cried happily as he all but tackled the sheep, holding it in place for me and Snake to grab it.

"Hold still! –says Wilde– guh!" Snake grunted as he tried to stop the sheep from struggling and hold it still, weighing down on its shoulders both through his own grip and his bodyweight.

"Hey Snake." I grunted as the smell of lanolin and the animal smell of the sheep itself drifted up to greet us, the sheep wiggling and baaing petulantly beneath the three of us. "Miss me?"

"We should just bite all these and get this over with, says Oscar." Snake grumbled under his breath, wincing as the sheep jerked its head up and nearly headbutted him. I had a funny feeling he was half expressing the desires of both himself and his snakes this time around, and grinned breathlessly, then swore and jerked my knee back as a hard sheep's hoof slammed into the side of my calf.

It was nice…ish, to be back.

_Ow._

__

_***Time Skip***_

Given the absurdity of only six people trying to herd a flock of dozens of sheep, Sebastian, thank something or another, had been ordered to "take care of things" and quickly performed one of high nigh-superhuman feats of agility and talent, rounding the sheep up and herding them into one of the horse paddocks, where they would wait for the farmer to come and collect his property. We were then free to troop back inside and, with Mey-rin, I stripped off my dress and grabbed for the pitcher of water and washcloth that served for our baths. We were covered in lanolin, grass stains, mud, dirt, and sweat from trying to wrangle all the sheep, and I felt filthier than I had in a good long while. Even the faint embarrassment of being basically naked in the same room as another naked person was dimmed (more like ignored) in the favor of wetting the cloth and scrubbing it with soap and then on me, over and over again, until I felt marginally less coated in gunk.

One thing to be grateful for having ridiculously short hair, it hadn't really gotten dirty, so I didn't need to go through the rigmarole of shampooing and sudsing my hair with only a pitcher to wash it off.

"So, you were gone quite a long while, yes you were." Mey-rin offered for comment once she had gotten her chemise and drawers back on and I had my own undergarments safely donned, raking a hairbrush through her hair.

"Eh, long-" _Not mission don't say mission._ "-business trip. How were things back here?"

Mey-rin smiled as she finished her last brush and fiddled with her lacy hairband, putting it in place on her hair and adjusting it around her ponytails as she bunched them. "Oh, things have been all right at the manor. That Snake fellow has been telling us all about the books he's read, yes he has." She sweatdropped slightly as she looked into the mirror. "It's a bit confusing with his, er, snakes always butting in, yes it is, but such good stories!"

"Mm." I commented, wiggling into one of my more severe, plain cotton gowns. "Well, our business trip left me with a lot of, er, files to do, so you guys might not be seeing much of me for a bit. Like, a week or so."

"Don't forget to eat, Miss Arya." Mey-rin said as she reached for one of her uniforms. "A nice big meal is just the thing to put you right after a long day, yes it is."

"Mm-yup." I finished buttoning my sleeves on my wrists. "I'll do that."

Freshly dressed, I grabbed my journal and a satchel with a certain number of books and other things inside, scampering out of the room with excitement fizzing in my veins. After all, I was getting pretty damn close to being able to go home, and however mind-numbingly boring my home was in particular, it was still _safe_ , and the place I was meant to be, rather than ricocheting around a bunch of fictional-ish dimensions.

Also, y'know, even if we weren't all that close I still wasn't such a bitch that I'd drag my feet in getting back to my parents, since I was their only child and missing –at this point– for almost an entire year. Most normal parents would be going nuts, and as it was, mine were probably extremely concerned.

Thaaat was a conversation I was not looking forward to having…

_"Young lady, where have you been?!"_

_"Uh…I fell through a magic wormhole?"_

_"Officer Hardhat, can you take this young woman's story?"_

_"Okay, so, its not like I ran away from home, and I wasn't kidnapped, but…"_

Yeah, there weren't many excuses you could make for a year-long absence, especially when I'd left or vanished or whatever when I was sixteen. If I'd been eighteen or something I could've spun something like "Ooh, I wanted to see the world and whatnot."

Running away to live your life was a thin excuse when you were sixteen, doubly so when you were a homebody along with the rest of your family.

Whatever. I'd figure it out. Chickens before eggs and all that: I needed to actually _get_ home before I started trying to brainstorm excuses for where I'd been and what I'd been doing, and why I was covered with a disturbing amount of combat-related scars. At least my fingernails had healed nice: aside from being just a titch shorter than I preferred normally, they were just the same as ever, which probably said something about Oliver's skill in pulling nails as torture. As far as I knew, if you did it wrong the nail beds would get all jacked up and when your nails grew back they were all gnarled and painful.

Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. I didn't really have experience in the medical area.

Moving on from that, rituals. I pinned a note to the door of one of the empty rooms and went inside, jamming a chair under the doorknob to keep anyone from busting in while I was occupied, and then spread out my supplies. My chalks, candles, matches, and the four elemental tools were all in my "art supplies," box which went towards the top of my makeshift desk. Pulling out the extra blank notebook I'd used at Weston and the book with the qualifier spell, I opened both, using plain unmagic rocks from my kit to weigh down the pages and keep the books open where I needed. My journal/basically-grimoire-at-this-point went front and center, and I flipped through it before using two more rocks to pin it open.

Alright.

Carefully, I set up four magic walls around the table, to make sure that whatever else happened, my supplies would be fine. With them between me and my stuff, they'd be safe from any chain reactions I set off.

Next, I pulled my cloak out from the now-empty satchel, setting it around my shoulders carefully before pulling the hood up.

Stepping very near to the walls, so I caught the quiet, near-silent hum of magic from them and felt something like static prickle my nose, I peered through the golden glow to run my eyes over the relevant spell one last time. Right. That was that set.

I committed the twisty runic symbol to memory, then turned around and held it clear in my mind, holding both it and the two specific types of magic symbols, the one I wanted and one I needed, clear in my mind –the qualifier that roughly meant "all types of rocks and minerals aside from," and the qualifier for rocks and minerals I had already assembled. If this spell should work, the magic would sense the rune for the rocks and minerals I had, and then provide a combination or singular rune for all the ones of that category not included in it already.

If it failed, something was about to blow up.

I chanted the appropriate three-part sequence of five, eight, and then twenty-four Latin words, letting the appropriate pronunciation float to the top of my mind from the lingering magic the undine had cast on my understanding of the language, and then waited, all but holding my breath.

A new symbol and a, a _sound_ popped into my head: the way that rune was supposed to be pronounced. I hastily took down my walls and grabbed my notebook, closing my eyes briefly to better concentrate before painstakingly drawing both the symbol and its pronunciation out on the page, before adding a brief disclaimer explaining just what the heck this symbol was even supposed to be.

I flipped back to the rest of my list, and sighed as I looked at the dozens –probably at least two hundred– words, concepts, and runes I had left to find.

_Making progress. Remember, this is to get home…this is to get **home** …_

_***Time Skip***_

Motivation or not, slogging through dozens of words and spells was a lot of work, and it wore you out quickly, not the least because I wasn't used to manipulating magic over long periods of time. Even with the comparatively larger amounts I had worked with before, that was almost always a one-and-done type scenario, potentially with one or two much smaller spells being worked minutes after. This…this was continuous, with only enough time to write down each new thing before I was off again, repeating that same quatrain over and over and over again, for _hours_ , siphoning off the magic of the estate and putting it into what I wanted. The energy may come from somewhere else, sure, but the energy to _control_ that energy came from me, and I was currently engaged in my first magical equivalent of an all-night all-moves slugging match of endurance.

The spell itself didn't take that much, but when I was doing it for hours on end with no pause or rest, well…

Needless to say, a cuppa was strongly needed by the time I rubbed my eyes and looked out the half-curtained window to see that late afternoon had fallen. Definite progress had been made –at least fifty new runes– but I was also exhausted, and more than ready to stop for the day entirely.

"Ughhh…" I groaned as I gathered up my supplies, stuffing everything back inside my spare satchel before heading for the door. _Why must going home take so much **work**?_

If Britain was here, he'd probably tell me something smarmy and proper about "nothing good comes without hard work," but thankfully he wasn't, and so I was spared that small moment of condescension. This was _magic_ , for Pete's sake! Shouldn't I just be able to wave my hand and have everything fix itself?!

I could almost feel the universe giving me a deadpan eyebrow at that one. When had my life ever been easy recently? It was one unfortunate, bloody event after another, which was absolutely _not_ because I was a magnet for trouble, definitely not, no sir. I'd managed to live sixteen years of my life with the most eventful events being connected to my job as a bellhop (or whatever else we were called now), and that was more being a soap-opera-esque audience to whatever nonsense was going on in the rooms, which pretty much spanned the full gamut of petty and venial. The catastrophic events of my life after I'd been launched into the world of fiction was _not_ my fault, and I was _not_ a magnet for trouble. If I had been, I'd have attracted more trouble before this. Definitely. Absolutely.

The fact I'd never really had the opportunity to attract trouble before was as maybe. It was _totally_ not me.

Well, okay, maybe it was _sorta_ on me that I'd involved myself with Ciel and Sebastian, but _other_ than that, all of the hazardous situations I kept somehow getting thrown into were definitely, totally, 100% not my fault because I was definitely, totally, 100% not a magnet for trouble.

Mm-hmm. Certainly not. Nope.

_Definitely._

Maybe it was a fluke, maybe the others were at their own tea or something, but the kitchen was empty when I slouched in with inky fingers and a smudge on my cheek, and I was left to make up a pot of tea myself. This was something I was rather proud of, since even six months ago I would've been clueless on how to do so, being as I was from the 21st century, and American, and my knowledge of how to make tea was "pour water in cup, stick bag in water, microwave."

I fancied I could almost hear the agonized screams of Britain from 150 years into the future and lord knew how many realities away. Stereotypical as it might be, he practically worshipped the drink and had nearly gone into convulsions of horror when I admitted I had no idea about all the different types of tea. Thankfully, he never knew about my blasphemous microwave-making of tea.

Plus, I thought with satisfaction as I lifted up the steaming kettle, if I ever saw him again I actually would know how to "properly" make tea, and he never _would_ know.

I still didn't get why the microwave thing was a blasphemy. The whole point was to get water boiling for the tea, microwaves worked just as well as fire. A mug was a mug. The tea was going to go in the mug anyways. Why was this a problem?

I imagined I could almost hear Britain's screaming increase in pitch.

Since tea always seemed rather weak and watery without me putting some real effort into it, I brewed my pot strong and put both milk and sugar into it, and sat at the kitchen table drinking it slowly, letting the muscles in my neck and shoulders loosen and relax, cracking my neck a few times to hasten this process and get it unstiffened. I stared at nothing as I drank, my thoughts slowing down and settling as the headache that had been threatening eased.

Interesting, it was, that I'd been an ambivalent tea drinker before, but now it was just…a thing that I did. _Regularly_. I suppose it was maybe a comfort thing, since while I'd been at Britain's house learning magic from him, it was frequently tea or nothing, and so tea had grown close in my association with him. And when I came here, tea had been one of the few points of familiarity that I could snatch at, since nearly everything else I was familiar with –indoor heating, most kinds of food, clothing– was gone without a hope of recovery. But this was Britain, and tea was always here.

So, tea.

I poured myself another cup and added the necessary garnishes. If things went as they should, I should probably start concocting a story for my sudden disappearance in regards to Mey-rin and the other servants who didn't know the true nature of my existence here. A sudden, urgent business call might do it, but I figured Mey-rin at least and probably Snake too would be somewhat hurt if I never wrote to them again, which obviously I couldn't do since, you know, different dimension. I didn't want to say I'd _died_ , though that would neatly cover all available options, because that was so…final. Not exactly the sort of thing I could take back if I screwed up my spell or something.

Sudden urgent business call to the back end of beyond…?

That would cover why I couldn't write, and I could even plan for it, telling Mey-rin and the others that there was probably no way I'd be able to get letters to them and it was all very sad, yes, but it was nice knowing them and I'd carry their memories fondly for the rest of my life, mm, hugs hugs, fond farewell. That could work, but I'd need to get everything ready beforehand, since stepping into the portal I'd created would be immediate and permanent.

The idea was, if I got it right, was to create a sigil which would glow when activated, permeable only to myself, and once I "entered its purview" (aka stepped onto it, since it was on the ground), it would activate and send me home. I'd need to create a circle of protection around it to stop any intervention or, if I screwed up, the explosion causing too much damage or being noticed. Thankfully, screwing up would result in an immediate explosion as I attempted to charge the pentacle, rather than an explosion that only happened when I tried to use it. This particular spell was a lot like an electric circuit in this way: if I flipped the switch and something was wrong, the fuse would blow before anything got anywhere, but if everything was gold, the circuit worked just fine and the electricity would ignite a lightbulb. And, of course, once the lightbulb was on I could use it however I damn well pleased if I didn't disconnect or fiddle with the circuit in any way.

Hence, I needed to get my stuff packed and cast a circle of protection around my proposed sigil before I even tried to activate it, and then, depending on how things went, I'd either dust myself off and try again, figure out what went wrong and correct it, or cheerfully tromp back and tell the others I was going home –er, being regrettably called away. Ciel would probably have to be informed a week or so in advance of me even trying, and of course once the pentagram had been used, it'd be inert, so I didn't have to worry about cleaning up afterwards. I would have to have a word with Sebastian about taking down my wards and scuffing over the sigil I had written into the dirt to make sure nothing else happened after I'd left.

Thinking of that brought up a new problem for me. Direction and timing were important in magic, and I was going to have to find a way to scrape off the grass and whatnot and then carve my sigils –perfectly and with pinpoint accuracy– into the ground in such a way that I didn't smudge over or step on them as I kept moving to draw everything in. That meant I was going to have to figure out an inside-out sort of movement, and see if that had any effect on the spell I intended to do. I couldn't leapfrog off of Britain for this one, since I hadn't actually witnessed what he –and the two other magicians who completed it with him– _did_ to make the sigil that had accidentally sent me here instead of home.

 _Dang it._

I slurped the last bit of my small pot of tea and got up to clean the kettle and my cup, making a halfhearted effort to scrub off the ink on my fingers as I washed out both dishes and left them on the rack to dry. That finished, I went back to my makeshift office to continue my magical search until dinner, when I could break for food and then a quick ride with Dämon, and then more headache-inducing work, and then sleep.

Pushing the door open, I sighed.

_Nose to the grindstone, man. Nose to the grindstone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: April 17th, 2020, 5.01 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: April 17th, 2020, 4.44 PM USA Central Time


	57. That Butler, One Forward & Two Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry 'bout the last chapter being shorter than my usual nowadays, but again, I have less time to do things in, ironically, and that chapter in particular was more of a transition than anything else. So yeah. In addition, my college WAS still doing online work, and my finals were coming up, and just to make life difficult my dad started working from home on the same computer I write things on. Also I have a field placement for one of my courses that's still going on right now, and the _Supernatural_ thing, so that's something else, too.
> 
> But that's all done now, more or less. Speaking of which, I was actually in a course about the history of the English language, and I STILL don’t really know when England was formed as a country. *shrug* We were more focused on the evolution brought on by other languages than English history itself. 
> 
> Cliff notes version, English branched off of several Germanic precursors, took bits of the local Celtic language and some Latin, then blended and simplified with the Vikings (Old Norse) when they came over to wreck shit, added a plethora of governmental French words when French was the upper class language, and then had a Great Vowel Shift right around when Shakespeare was writing, which means anyone who pronounces it in modern English is actually doing it WRONG.
> 
> Hour and whore used to be homophones. "From hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we rot and rot, and thereby hangs a tale" ITS A SEX PUN GUYS. ITS ALWAYS A SEX PUN. HE MEANT "From whore to whore we ripe and ripe, and then from whore to whore we rot and rot, and thereby hangs a tale."
> 
> Y'all need to have that information 'cause our whole class _died_ when the instructor showed us a video where an actor at the Globe in London explained all this and grumbled a bit about everyone using normal English for Shakespeare and thus Doing It Wrong. (For those that wonder, hour/whore at that stage of English were both pronounced something like "ooh-or".)
> 
> Also speaking of whores, _Fanny Hill_ is one of the most prosecuted/banned books in history and is widely considered to be the first original prose pornography in English. It has lesbianism, male-on-male sex, an orgy, and some BDSM, along with blatant, well, sex-having and the enjoyment thereof. Not very impressive in modern terms (I mean, we have racier fanfiction on this very site), but a big stonking deal when it was originally published in _1748_. Just imagine an age when a lady showing knee or the tiniest slip of ankle was seen as borderline flashing and you can understand why minds fucking melted over this novel.
> 
> Speaking of NSFW stuff I guess, also, you can indeed store things in your cleavage, or at least you can if you have a bodice. This I know from personal experience, as I work at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. I actually keep my wallet and ID in there all day, since my costume doesn't have pockets, and sometimes store my phone and/or keys there real quick when I'm doing other stuff that requires me using both hands. Also tips, though that's more because I have a button just beneath my cleavage that says "Tips Go Here" with an arrow pointing upwards. (This is because we're technically not allowed to solicit tips, but we are allowed to accept them, so...gotta let people I take tips somehow, and that was the most non-risqué button I could find.) Pleasantly enough, and perhaps contrary to common expectation, nobody's been creepy about that...yet. Not that I'm inviting it or anything, but it is a bit weird considering I'm an otherwise skinny D-cup in a tight bodice and there are drunk people walking around with bad impulse control. Maybe I exude so much asexual energy it gets on EVERYONE'S gaydar, even if their gaydar otherwise sucks? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> ALSO, I love how AO3 separates notes and fic like this, because I _can_ go off on these ridiculously long, rambling tangents in my author's notes and it doesn't fudge with the story. Woohoo!

_Arya's POV:_

It was fair enough to say that I had missed the presence of a good number of things during my time in 1888 and 1889 London. Air conditioning, for one thing, or any kind of internal heating whatsoever –that was a big one. Many nights over this winter I had spent shivering a bit under my blankets with multiple layers of nightwear and socks to keep my body at a correct enough temperature to actually fall asleep and now, over the past few months, I had spent a near-equal amount of time with the blankets twisted artfully around my body, trying to achieve that perfect mix of there-is-actually-a-blanket-over-me psychosis and sweltering-oh-my-god-my-feet-are-sweating heat that came with the blanket fully covering me. Hence, my nights had been somewhat short of sleep over the several transition periods between winter, spring, and now summer.

Another big thing was the food. You couldn't really heat things up with any convenience the way I was used to, and cold things were a lot harder to come by. Cool things, especially now, were becoming all but impossible to get casually. Food actually had to be prepared, rather than opened, maybe swirled around a bit with a spoon, and stuck into a microwave. Drinks were water, _maybe_ milk, or tea, with the rare and fizzy lemonade or other juices, and with weak alcohol in the forms of wine and beer and all those other things. The variety of foods and drinks I had were greatly depleted, to say the least, though stuff was still good.

There was the whole blatantly sexist attitude that prevailed throughout all of this society, too, but since I was not technically "in" society much, that affected me less, and I planned to continue avoiding it as much as possible from here on out until I got home.

Right now, though, the thing I was almost half willing to sell my soul for was headache medicine.

Massaging my temples, I glared blearily at the scrawls and scribbles of my notebook. Sure, Mey-rin had suggested some laudanum from the downstairs pantry, but I had barely looked at the label before slamming the door shut again.

The words "ten percent opium" had not been encouraging. Old-timey medicines were not under prescription and they did _not_ fuck about, and I was in no way ready to start an addiction. Nope, no sir.

Anyways, where was I? A couple weeks after we'd come back from Weston, and I was about ready to bash my head through a wall. Or get an ice pack. Whichever stopped the hurting first.

There was a list of magic words and sigils and so on that at this point was probably longer than I was tall, all scrawled out as neat and accurate as I could make it in the pages of my notebook, and a whole snowstorm of further pages in which I mixed and mashed and combined them all together into their proper forms that, hopefully, wouldn't blow up in my face if and when I used them to mix and mash together in the larger and more complete form of a master-sigil that covered everything that this whole world was. You could see that as my notes went on, covering nearly half the book, the intricate, vaguely spiky-looking magic sign that denoted _Black Butler_ , or parts thereof, slowly getting larger and more complex as the pages marched on, like a spreading stain on a snowflake.

That was as maybe. The work was all done there.

The _problem_ was that I had, at this point, yet to attach the runes that would power the whole thing. The idea was I had the central rune, made up of hundreds of lesser runes which in turn were further conglomerations of other runes, and all that mixed together meant this universe, but for all those pretty signs to be of any use, I needed to suck in power to use them. The good old-fashioned pentacle, which worked well enough for less complex and powerful spells, just wouldn't be enough, especially when I was using it as a matrix to house and refine two other equally (fiendishly) complex runes. I needed to attach ignition runes, as it were, to all three, only _not_ all three, just mine, since Britain, the know-everything delight that he was, had already done that with the other two before using them to inadvertently send me here.

Problem was, I couldn't just copy that over, since that used different sigils from a different world that connected to different parts of those other two master-runes, which were of course constructed of completely different magic signs.

Hence, I had to come up with it from scratch.

Hence, I had to find a way to attach a host of various different runes to the fiendishly complex sigil I had made in a way that wouldn't make the feedback turn in on itself and blow me up or something.

Hence, headache. I _was_ only an apprentice after all, or at least I was before I'd had to do all this myself.

"Gnnnneeeh…" I groaned incoherently as my forehead met desk, hands akimbo above my still-growing hair. What I wouldn't give for Advil and Britain to be standing here right now, fussing over my shitty handwriting and flipping condescendingly through my notebook as he told me everything I was doing wrong and then snootily showed me how to do it right. Dude was about as aggravatingly _tsundere_ as one could get, but he knew his stuff and he wasn't shy on showing off about it through education.

But nope. I was going it alone now, since my phone's battery was ominously low, last time I'd had it on to send a photocopy of my almost-final product, hovering somewhere in the 70 or 60 percent rage. I hadn't dared do anything more than turn it on to send the message and check for a reply on a daily basis, before copying his response for any future need to check in on it and then turning my phone right back off again.

So, I was on my own, since I wasn't going to waste my battery for anything but an immediate and urgent need, like making sure I'd actually put everything in this master-rune together in such a way that wouldn't turn me inside out and then explode what was left. Britain would be able to proof-check my stuff from six miles out: he had been a magician for almost as long as he'd been alive, which probably dated at least as far back as the formation of England as a country, and probably a bit earlier than that, as his people conceptualized themselves as a discreet cultural identity that would eventually _form_ a nation.

When was that, anyways? England was around to have the Hundred Years' War, and that was like, 1300-1400, right? They had to be around for at least like a hundred years earlier to have the military clout to keep that going, especially in the Middle Ages or whenever that technically was…

Ah, but anyways. Headache. Pentacle being a bitch. Polished wooden desk not cooperating and turning into a comfortable pillow for my aggrieved face. Britain being a bitch for sending me here in the first place and also not magically appearing at my elbow the moment I got into difficulties.

"Gneh." I grunted against the desk again, for emphasis. Or maybe venting. Either was equally plausible at this point.

No, I had to be strong. Thus thinking, I nobly shoved myself away from the desk and straightened my shoulders –wincing a little as my pounding skull throbbed– as I prepared to face Fiendishly Complex Death all over again. I had three different books open in front of me aside from my notebook, and all of them were on power and focus runes, sigils, and spells. I could do this. I could totally do this. Sure, I had cheated for about half of it, but I had _still_ put the backbreaking work into creating a master-sigil that covered this entire fucking world! Charging the damn thing was nothing! I was a fully functioning magical _badass!_ So what if I hadn't received formal education beyond the rawest of raw basics? I'd pulled myself up by my nonexistent bootstraps and hastily mastered probably a whole career's worth of learning in only six or so months!

(And there was certainly no way _that_ unsupervised education in the perilous world of magic would ever come back to bite me. Nope. Definitely not.)

_***Time Skip***_

Ironclad resolution or not, it was only an hour later that I found myself stabbing my pen with undue venom (and more importantly, in a way dangerously liable to spill ink) at the pages of my notebook, and wisely deciding on something of a break, I stuffed it in my pocket and went down to the stables to saddle Dämon. Riding him out to my magic clearing gave me time to clear my head with the warm summer air and bright sunshine, as well as exercising us both. At this point the spunky horse knew the routine as well as I did, and I tethered him to a tree surrounded by long grass, before de-saddling him and throwing the saddle over a nearby smooth log. Dämon would be able to browse and even lounge in comfort, since I'd given him enough slack in the lead rope to lay down as long as he was reasonably close to the tree, and he'd be able to wait for a long period of time without the uncomfortable weight and restriction of a saddle.

Me, I hitched up my severe brown skirts and headed for the battered crate of gardening tools I kept incongruously against another tree, although this was slightly inside my clearing, past the wards that pushed away any interlopers and kept the place itself both clean of any negative (demonic) influence and protected from any mistakes I made in the incendiary sense. Currently my wards would do both me and the world no good if I accidentally summoned something I couldn't control, but since I never dealt with anything that _could_ summon except a few times in the early days when I was desperately trying to access magical languages, that was okay.

One of my other big problems was keeping the damn clearing clear. It was, after all, the hot and heady days of June, and what with the fertile soil, warm sun, and typical British rain, the weeds, grass, and every other small plant in creation were doing their persistent best to lay claim to the large empty patch of dirt I had carved out of the center of the clearing.

Not if I had anything to say about it, I thought grimly as I donned my tough leather garden gloves and then tugged them straight with the determination of someone accepting a duel, then lifted my spade from the box. Not if I fucking had anything to say about it.

"Yaah!"

A moderately-sized clump of dirt flew up as I slammed the spade into the ground like I would a battleax, tufts of healthy green grass sprouting out everywhere from said clod as I scowled and adjusted my stance.

Another benefit of doing this, aside from getting me some daily exercise in the shoulders and arms, was working out my frustration on the innocent ground and much-less-innocent plants encroaching on _my_ turf.

Er, actual turf, for once. Genuine English sod.

Hehe.

Anyways, working in aforementioned glorious June sunshine and gulping in deep healthy breaths of a pre-fossil-fuels-era forest far from any gasworks or even steam machinery, taking occasional swallows of water from the bottle I always took with, that served to ease my pounding headache as well as minimize my frustrations, and since I had so much _god-damned practice_ at clearing the weeds and grass out from my patch of earth (oh, my kingdom for weed-killer, if I wasn't half-afraid it would do something horrible when I enacted magic on that spot), it probably wasn't more than an hour or so when the formerly fuzzy green ground had been replaced by loose, clumpy black soil.

Healthily in-shape or not, I was still sweating like a pig when I finished –my dress not lending well to being worked in and not made of a very breathable fabric despite it being the lightest one I owed– and I spared a moment for rehydration as I tromped back over to my box in preparation for the next stage of my semi-daily war against weeds.

Granted, this was partially my fault to begin with. Earth, as a general rule, was not a good medium for creating magical sigils, never mind overly complex ones. Sand was usually the best natural option when you had to, and even then, you had to go big or go home, inscribing very large magic signs with simple geometry and few details. Soil of any type, after all –sand, clay, earth, mud, stone– did not hold up to inscription well due to the pure simple fact it was always made of particles, small bits of mineral and other grains of rock. It crumbled, it flaked, it shifted, and worst of all from a magician's perspective, it could be easily erased. The less natural –but obviously highly favored if you got the chance– options were clay and stone, since clay could and had been worked for thousands of years and stone could be inscribed, if you had the tools and the time. In an emergency situation, you tended to not have time, so earth-working, in the sense of writing in the dirt, was something most magicians tended to pick up, especially those with a focus in combat. Britain had skimmed over the basics with me, and I'd seen him do a fair bit himself, but it still wasn't ideal.

Nah, if we were talking _ideals_ , we were talking smooth polished stone and some kind of paint as a layer atop it, or really, paint or ink or some other kind of drawable substance on a flat, smooth surface. Plaster, wood –single wood, not multiple planks, since that put gaps in the lines– canvas, fabric (usually an embroidered design), those were _ideals_.

But of course, ideals were just that –the ideal version of a scenario that was unlikely to ever occur in real life. Sure, experienced magicians like my mentor and I-guess-at-this-point-archnemesis Oliver had ready-made things all over their homes, but those were defenses or conveniences built up over years, not something made on the spot or probably even recently. They were hobby things or projects made long ago and made to last: not recent, not slapdash, and above all, not hurried.

Back in the real world, magicians made do with what they had in the immediate moment. In a controlled scenario like most of his teaching with me, Britain painted on the bare, seamless concrete floor of his second basement. In an uncontrolled situation, such as a fight, magicians either called up memories of various sigils –inscribing them into their minds– or slammed down what they could where they could, carving or painting it into a near surface. Because this was obviously the slower and more dangerous option, few magicians relied on it, which as mentioned previously was one of the many reasons I _was_ still a novice, because I had only two or three reliably memorized spells and incantations and would have to pull out my notebook/grimoire, look what I wanted up, and _then_ do whatever I had to do in a combat scenario, which was why I had yet to do anything really impressive in regards to my fights here in this world.

However, _obviously_ , something complex like this world-switching spell was obviously something no one on earth could actually memorize and envision, so there were a number of big-league spells many magicians _had_ to write out onto something. Hence, Britain had taught me a number of methods on how to do it, though it was skimmed, since no one had assumed he'd fuck up so badly and I'd have any reason to practice magic aside from as a hobby when I got home.

For reasons obvious, I had discarded painting anything on anything, not the least because actually _good_ paints were prohibitively expensive now. This clearing was the only place on the estate private enough for me to work large-scale spells and also shielded from Sebastian's innate corruptive energies. Drawing in the dirt was inefficient, painting on dirt was even worse, and it wasn't like I could lug a six-foot canvas square out here. Did they even _make_ them that big at this point in history?

So painting on a smooth flat surface was out. Painting on _anything_ was out.

Mentally inscribing was a previously-discussed impossibility.

Inlaying metal or inscribing thereon was also out, because I didn't have a sheet of metal large enough to do that, or the tools to do it, or enough scrap metal and metallurgy skills to create the inlays I'd sink in the ground.

In fact, any kind of physical creation, sculpting or shaping the runes I needed in a 3D form, was out, because I either didn't have the skills to do so or, again, even with magic there was just so much to do and not enough stuff to do it with.

Hence, at this point, no matter how primitive it was, drawing in the dirt was my only option, and with that in mind I pushed off of my seat on the lid of the crate and opened it, pulling out an odd tool with a broom-length wooden handle but a flat iron head affixed perpendicular to the wooden shaft, which stuck out of the middle of said metal plate. Hefting this, I walked over to the edge of the slight dip of bare earth and lifted the aptly-named tamper, beginning to stomp it methodically down on the ground to flatten out the crumbly earth and give me a semi-smooth surface to work with. It was hard work, largely because the metal head of the tamper was disproportionally heavy to the soft earth I was working with, and slightly aggravating, because it didn't pack the earth down hard enough to stop the faint scuffs and ridges of dirt my feet and the edges of the tamper left over as I worked my clear-ish patch of earth in a grid pattern, making sure to get everything down as flat as I could.

This occupied me for a shorter time despite my eye-twitching need for perfect flatness, and I sighed and wiped some sweat off my forehead as I let the tamper rest against the ground for a few moments and viewed the fruit of my labors –which would no doubt need more of the exact same labors within a week– with weary satisfaction.

"Alright, now that the groundwork is set, part two." I mumbled to myself as I dragged the tamper around the outside of my clear patch, setting it in the crate and dropping my gloves in as well. I dusted my hands off on my skirt, then pulled my notebook out of my pocket and opened it to the page with the so-far-complete master rune for _Black Butler_ , considering it carefully. I then reached into the crate without looking and fumbled around for a moment before pulling out my clumsily-whittled staff, which until recently had been an innocent branch lying inside the Phantomhive estate woods. Painstaking knifework, a few swear words, and some splinters had scraped it smooth, and with my nose still in my book, I walked out to the center of the cleared space in my clearing.

There were practical reasons for doing this, I thought as I flicked the back cover of my book to activate its "follow levitate" rune and began to carefully draw out the prescribed sigil with both hands. I was doing test runs before I completed the main sigil, and even with the scant few times I'd done it, I had learned a lot. For one thing, I couldn't draw and carry my notebook at the same time –or rather, draw accurately while holding the book, hence this spell etched into the back cover so that it followed me at readable height and I had both hands free to draw in the dirt. For another, I was learning the precise amount of force and wristwork necessary to draw out the various curves, lines, and complex geometry of my sigil without blurring the lines in the dirt by carving them too shallow or clumsily. For yet another, I was learning how to step and how to slowly circle my way outwards as I drew this, and more than once I had stopped and made notes to change the order of my incantation.

See, the idea was –for the final product– I would chant the words that activated and powered the particular symbols I was using (literally all of them in _Black Butler_ ) as I drew them, and as I noticed how drawing this symbol before this one worked better, I obviously had to edit the order of my invoking of them.

Drawing everything all out multiple times in practice also lessened the possibility for error, since I had already committed too many to name during previous repetitions and doing it wrong as I was feeding power into the array was a recipe for messy, explosive, cataclysmic disaster. I had to get everything right as I did it. The meter for my spellwork in this case allowed for pauses, so I could shut up and concentrate briefly to draw out a specific part of the sigil, but only for a little bit, and I had to keep going when I finished that bit. In essence, I could slow down but not stop, so exacting practice was a good way to ensure that, when I finally got around to doing the damn thing, it would go off without a hitch, first time.

Ah, wishful thinking. How beautiful it was.

Anyways, working with the sigil as I was doing now basically left it inert: even though I was using a pentacle and drawing out _all_ of the required parts of this master array, both the _Black Butler_ parts and the parts for the other worlds I was forbidding myself from, I wasn't channeling any magic into it. In fact, I had set my wards to deliberately prohibit magic drawing in this area for this time, to prevent any accidental start-ups. It was safe, and a good stepping stone to my eventual final ritual.

Well, that took a while, and when I was done I cleaned the end of my staff and surveyed the results with some small amount of pride. Not bad, not bad at all. I hadn't gone any faster than my prior attempts, but there were less mistakes, and the whole thing looked marginally neater.

I put the stick –er, my staff– back inside the crate and took out the tamper again, leaving it at the edge of the cleared patch before going down and manually scuffing out all the lines with my feet, making sure to roll over even the dips and hollows left over from the lines before I brought the tamper in to get it all down flat.

Frustratingly, this sort of back-and-forth took up all the rest of June. I was so _close_ , and yet so agonizingly not close enough. No matter how I paged through the books I had on power-generation runes, no matter how I tried to tie them in, it never worked. The versions I had and had cautiously tried to work in the ritual had all but permanently scarred the ground inside my protective haven of the wards, and I'd had to get new garden tools (and a crate) twice. The charred remains and melted metal near the edge of the clearing were permanent reminders of my near-constant failure, and I was about ready to tear my hair out in July, when Ciel gave the unexpected order for _all_ the servants –not just Sebastian, not just me and Sebastian– to saddle up and come on an errand run with him to London.

Jumping at the chance to (politely) grab the simulacrum-crystal-thing that ran the magic bookshop and shake it (pay it) until the relevant books fell out, I was raring to go within minutes of the order, dressed and even hatted to the epitome of Victorian sensibility…or at least as close as I could get. My hair still wasn't long enough to put up into any kind of arrangement, but it was starting to brush my shoulders and I could hope with a few more weeks and/or a month it'd be long enough to at least put up in a ponytail.

Ciel, being important, rattled along in his own padded, curtained, and enclosed carriage, and Mey-rin and the other servants and I were all piled into our own open-top wagon with nary a pillow in sight. I didn't let the obvious class difference irk me (too much), too busy following up on the other servants' gossip and jibing Snake, who was driving our single horse, with literary quotes. Infuriatingly, the scaly-skinned bastard actually _knew_ some of the obscure Latin texts I flung at him, and when he wasn't flicking the horse away from the rougher parts of the road he and I were going a mile a minute, with me frantically flinging every viable (and those weren't many) quote I knew at him and him deflecting and all but driving me into a corner. Mey-rin, the dear, tried to help, but she obviously wasn't much of a reader and Snake effortlessly reposted most of her queries. A few that turned out to be from penny dreadful-type ghost-story magazines stumped him briefly, but Mey-rin soon dried up after we reminded her of the unspoken rule never to use a story more than once. Finny chimed in with stuff from the Fenian Cycle, oddly enough, but Snake apparently knew most of that and was able to deflect him again at every turn. Bardroy's…help, wasn't exactly helpful, as he tossed out a few lines that I didn't recognize but Snake evidently did, from the way he turned red right down to his scales and spluttered. He didn't –or couldn't– name the source before Bardory did, which made Bardroy technically the winner, but when he said "Fanny Hill" Mey-rin squawked and took off her hat to hit him with it, beet-red, as Finny and I exchanged mutually confused, unknowing looks.

Clearly it was some sort of porn, and I was totally getting my hands on it at the first available opportunity. I mean, _Victorian_ porn? How bad could it be?

I needed to see and know that shit for science and historical smugness. Who else could say they'd read Victorian porn?! Who would have _actual_ Victorian porn from the actual Victorian period?! Nobody but me, that's who.

My smutty plots were interrupted by the necessity to physically restrain Mey-rin, who seemed bound and determined to beat a cackling Bardroy to death via straw hat, shrieking about impropriety. I gathered she was more offended on behalf of Finny, who was still blinking innocently, than any actual offended sensibility, but as Bardroy lifted his hands and half-heartedly shifted in his seat to avoid her blows, she was hitting so viciously he was actually in some danger of overbalancing and falling right out of our open carriage. I got her to sit down, fuming silently as she plopped her hat back down on her cherry-red locks and then folded her arms. I gathered some form of retribution was in Bardroy's immediate future from her dire looks and inaudible mutters, though what sort I hardly dared guess. Mey-rin _might_ convince Snake to send a snake to plague him, though my only doubts on that score were whether or not she'd think of it or have the pure viciousness needed to extract her idea of punishment. Mey-rin's killing instincts seemed to operate on the flick of a switch, and in her dorky maid form she was on "off."

Eh, it was none of my business. Whatever happened, happened.

Luckily, we made it into London proper without any further shenanigans, and I was left to lounge in my seat and admire the older scenery of central London as Snake drove us over Westminster Bridge. In my prior time in Britain, some hundred-odd years into the future and in another dimension, I'd spent some small amount of time on my days off in London, so there was an interesting mix of the familiar and the antique. Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament were still there, as yellowed and baroque as ever, but the street Snake was trundling the carriage along was cobblestone and not sharp-painted asphalt, and the ornate lamps lining the sidewalk were gas instead of electric, or at least, so I thought. Hard to tell from a rattling carriage in the street.

"Waah!" Finny cried excitedly, scurrying over to Bardroy's side of the carriage to stare at the huge clocktower with shining eyes. "What a big clock!"

"It's called Big Ben" Bardroy explained indulgently, looking over his shoulder.

"Sounds strong~!"

More such exclamations kept us amused during the twenty-odd minutes of rambling across this part of London, until we clopped over another bridge and a casual glance across the water had me blinking. The Tower of London was still there, gleaming and white on the bank like a serpent, but only a few hundred yards away from it was the skeleton of a half-completed bridge whose silhouette I found very familiar indeed, with a fleet of small boats huddled around two bases like a flock of frightened ducklings.

"Ain't that the Tower Bridge?" I asked, nonplussed, and Mey-rin glanced over her shoulder.

"Oh my, yes. Won't it be a grand thing when it gets finished someday!"

"Uh…yeah." I said blankly, still staring at the iron girders and scaffolding, having seen that same –completed– bridge in just about every postcard pic, panorama shot, and flyby London movie scene I could care to name. "…totally cool."

_Well ain't that weird. I do wish I could use my phone to snap a pic of that, though._

_***Time Skip***_

Our first stop, as it turned out, was an optician's shop for Mey-rin. There was a truly disturbing, er…I guess it was an advertisement, of a painted pair of spectacles with eyes gazing out of them hung in the central of a three-window panel, along with a segmented sign announcing it as _Donson Opticians_. The eye-glasses sign was the size of me, and I poked it with a disturbed expression as Mey-rin sat in a chair by the counter, trying on a series of glasses and peering at a series of lines on the other side of the counter. I vaguely remembered seeing something similar in a _Great Gatsby_ movie I'd seen in my last year of actual modern high school…the thought of which made me wince. I'd be at least an entire school year behind if things moved on the same basic monthly cycle as they did here, and just the idea of the amount of work I'd have to do to catch back up had me whimpering. It wasn't fair! I'd spent this whole damn time (well, the last six months of it) working my tail off on like, a graduate-level thesis paper of magical runes and spellwork, _and_ I'd been in a college, but I'd just have to do more work when I got home!

Totally not cool. All the shit I'd done –school prepared you for life and a job and the soul-rending machinery of the American work force, and I'd totally gotten more preparation for life and being an employee from all this than one measly year of high school would ever get me! I mean, what junior (third year, for non-Americans) high schooler knew how to set up tabs at an establishment, participate in a military operation, conduct highly complex research, _and_ had experience networking and connecting with other people?

I was _prepared_ for the rest of my whole damn life.

"FWAH!"

A cry from Mey-rin and a _crash_ from behind me jolted me out of my inner ramblings, and I spun to see her on her back with her chair tipped up on the ground, red-faced and clutching her chest as she stared up at a nonplussed Sebastian, who was standing at her side with one arm outstretched in the very act of apparently paying the man for the glasses that sat on her nose.

"Seeing too well is a problem too, it is!" she spluttered, blushing harder than I'd ever seen her. I raised an eyebrow and moved over to help her up, as our fellow servants and the shop owner seemed too bound by Victorian propriety to attempt touching her, though they hovered anxiously around us as I bent down and helped Mey-rin to her feet. Sebastian could probably help, but I had the odd feeling that if he touched her while she was this flustered Mey-rin would go full catatonic.

Her embarrassment kept Mey-rin quiet and fiddling with her new, apparently much-more-accurate glasses all the way to our next stop, but she revved right up again when we walked into a hat shop named _Lock & George_, dragging me excitedly over to the display of women's hats and chattering a mile a minute.

Hats, as I had come to understand, were important to the Victorians. No woman left her house or was seen in public without a hat, and few men either, though younger ones like Finny were given some slack. The more elegant and fashionable the hat, and the more hats you had, the higher your status. Top hats were for the upper class exclusively, and cloth caps were something just about anybody, even the poorest laborer, had at least one of. Part of this importance was due to the social rules that still lingered from more puritan times, the idea of covering the hair and whatnot, but another part of it, especially for women, was more about fashion.

Dresses, no matter how high your level in society was, were always made by someone else. In fact, only the poorest probably made their clothes, and frequently –in London at least– not even then. Consequently, the most fashionable and elite of dresses still were, in the end, not customizable. The dressmaker made them, not you, and though you could order and command to have this and that addition and style in this or that color, there were only so many ways to execute the seams and decorations with the current level of technology. Furthermore, after the dress was actually made, altering it was basically impossible for the owner, even just to add embellishments, and if they didn't want to be unfashionable by reusing the same garment, they had to pay the obscene amounts of money necessary for a new one, or scramble by using new accessories.

Hats, though. Hats were customizable out the _ass_. Feathers, ribbons, netting, wire sprays, jewelry, beading, straw hats, velvet hats, silk hats, felt hats, bonnets: as long as you matched the style and color to your dress, your hat could be the epitome of personal style and economic status. Hats were the phonecases of this age –or the purses, maybe. (I didn't follow fashion all that much, so I wasn't too sure of the latter comparison.)

Anyways, since they were so ubiquitous, they _could_ be used and decorated with such versatility, and because they were, a sweet hat was the lowkey goal of every young lady, and those with the wealth to spend on hats bought them as obsessively as any stereotypical gold-digger bought Prada purses and high heels. It was a universal enthusiasm and fashion awareness: even Mey-rin, who was a maidservant and technically one of the lower strata of society (not to mention one whose only other female associate was me), knew and could tell me which hat styles were The Ones of the current season, why they were so lovely, which ones the Professional Beauties were wearing, how much each hat was, and how amazing it would be to have one.

In _excruciating detail_.

Now, I wasn't a fashion person, but I also wasn't one of those pretentious "not like other girls" chicks that hung with the boys and rejected all femininity on the basis of it destroying or cheapening their identity or something. Nah, my problem with fashion was that, well, growing up on a socially isolated farm had left me…well, socially isolated, and I'd made my female friends in fellow nerds, not their preppier counterparts. Hence, I'd never been socialized into the concept of fashion by other girls who knew what they were talking about telling me about all those things. Hence, most talk of fashion left me cold. It was like a foreign language, or more accurately, unfamiliar slang. I didn't know the terms, and I didn't know the context, so the whole thing was all one hopeless jumble.

Also the modern fashion industry was hella toxic to most of the poor souls embroiled in it and I wanted no part in that even by proxy.

So I smiled and nodded in hopefully all the right places, and tucked away a few new words about brims and curls and colors that _hopefully_ wouldn't be obsolete once I got back to my world and time period. I also gathered between the oohinh and ahing over various ribbons and tucks that this was in large part a servants' trip, since Mey-rin needed glasses (as I had gathered), Finny needed a new hat, and Ciel needed to do some businessy something at Harrods'.

Harrods, for context, was –and still is, as I knew from my stint in modern-day _Hetalia_ – a super-famous department store with the name brand recognition of every American retail supercorp ever and all the prestige of an old British institution, complete with prepacked sexism and needless dress codes. As I'd discovered from one trip with Britain, they had _customer dress codes_. For the customers. A code. Of what they were allowed to wear. What _customers_ were allowed to wear into the store.

Anyways, fuckoff-sized department store. Hella famous.

Since a simple milk run really…wasn't, in this day and age, Ciel had evidently decided to combine a series of errands that needed running all into one trip, hence this group ride to London and bouncing around different shops as we got what we needed. Since he was in that big important carriage and I couldn't exactly sidle up to him and talk shop in public, I was a little worried about whether I'd even get the opportunity to detour for more magic books, and its not like I knew the bookshop's address to write a letter. If we were just here to run errands and go home, I couldn't really envision a way to sneak off on my own, since the others (other than Ciel and Sebastian, I meant) would be rightfully suspicious, confused, and worried in equal turns if I slipped off and didn't come back for a while. On the other hand, if we planned to spend the night, I could go off on my errand real quick and come back with none of the others any wiser or worried.

Such concerns and half-baked plots continued to occupy me as we rattled off to a shop for handbags and purses, oddly enough, where Snake bought a plus-sized school bookbag-like satchel to carry all his little friends –the demonstration of which led to Bardroy and a female passerby shrieking, and at least one womanly faint. (Not from our dubiously courageous cook…unfortunately.) Another detour led us to a bookshop, sadly not a magic one, and I immediately went for the fiction section…or more accurately, "Novels."

Some of the stuff I went for were books in the Phantomhive library that I'd read at the behest of Snake and actually liked to some extent, and since I couldn't exactly steal Ciel's books and didn't even know if these were still in print or even _existent_ in my time and world, into the metaphorical cart they went. I wandered over to the "Classical Literature" section too, since those had some works I'd read at Weston and actually been somewhat invested in, since the way Latin and Greek had been put into my head actually, technically, left me unable to speak it spontaneously. The words were there, and to call them forth I had to think of them and their meaning, which meant that I could _technically_ actually converse with them, but there would be a half-second delay between each and every word, which would obviously get real old, real fast with any naturally fluent speakers. Similarly, I could read Latin and Greek fluently, but to actually think of the words as they were written on the page, as opposed to reading "normally" and letting the meaning filter through the magic learning I'd been gifted with, just left me confused.

As always, there was a consequence of taking a cheaty shortcut in learning something.

In any case, after I'd done that and grabbed a decent stack of just-because novels –novels which may or may not have been sharply out of Snake's usual subjects of interest, by some _strange_ coincidence– I plopped that stack down on the counter and reached into my dress pocket to pay.

An even larger stack _thudded_ onto the counter next to mine, and I looked sharply over at the owner. Mid-reach for his own wallet, Snake narrowed his slitted yellow eyes at me, and had this still been an anime, electric flares would no doubt have been darting between our chibified eyes as we each recognized the obvious power play each stack of books was and sought to intimidate our opponent through a show of sheer brute force…aka a staring contest of chicken.

The register person coughed awkwardly, and neither of us acknowledged him or blinked.

"Snake." I said icily.

"Thompson –says Donne." he replied, narrowing his eyes a little.

"Got an awful big pile of books there. Gonna use them for something? Not puttin' _pressure_ on ya or anything, am I?"

"Not at all, says Donne. Snake is simply expanding my horizons, he explains. That is something _you_ sadly cannot understand, since you do not seem to be eager to read too many books at all –he adds."

I hopefully controlled my wince enough so that he didn't see it on my face. _That was a good one, damnit._

"I think you of all people know just how much I read." I said, swallowing a little after I spot and feeling my hands sweat. That in its turn _wasn't_ a very good one –he had me on the back foot.

And he knew it.

"Not at all, as far as Snake can tell –says Donne." Snake replied as his deadpan glare softened into a slow, smug smirk.

 _ **Damnit**!_ I'd walked right into that one.

"Oh yeah?" I smacked my hand onto the cover of my topmost book. "Well, I got here first, so I'm gonna go ahead and buy all these, and I'm _not_ gonna share, except to kick your-"

I realized that finishing that sentence may very well lead to another few faints all around me.

"-I shall only share them when I use their quotes to achieve a crushing victory over you in our little contest." I hastily changed midsentence with a sickeningly sweet smile that twitched at the edges. _Nailed it. No way Victorians would think that one crass._

"Done." Snake slammed his hand on top of his own, taller stack. "And Snake will use these to trounce you completely, Donne says with conviction."

"Oh _yeah_ -"

This childish exchange may well have continued _ad infinitum_ , with added and louder slaps to the covers of the books for emphasis, if not for Ciel bustling up with a much-smaller stack of books of his own and impatiently scooting mine to the side. Since a few of those books were badly balanced, this started a domino effect that knocked over Snake's stack as well, and with nearly identical cries of alarm, we both lunged to grab what was important –the books, irregardless of whose stack they belonged to– and stop them from landing on the dusty, dirty ground. This occupied us for several moments, and there were several moments more in which we looked over the titles and switched books back and forth until we both had what we were supposed to, with solicitous murmurs of "I think this is yours" and "Lovely choice."

The cashier looked quiet frankly relieved when we finally paid and left, balancing both stacks of books under our chins until we got to the wagon and carefully set them down under the seats, wrapped up in butcher's-paper much like our several other bundles. Sneaky child that I was, I'd managed to get a copy of the _Fanny Hill_ book that had appalled Snake so much, and after tapping the cover to set an illusion on the title, I settled back to read as the cart jolted off again. This occupied me until and after our next stop, a candy store that the others entered while Bardroy lounged on the outside and Snake, settling back and dropping the reins into his lap, reached over for one of his own books and buried his nose firmly between its pages.

Bookworms. We were a surprisingly conformist lot. Give us a stationary setting and material, and we were off, reading in nearly exactly the same pose and with the same detached air of attention. The… _literature_ I was reading wasn't even that engrossing, being occupied with far too much 16th-century prose, but even so I barely noticed as the others clambered back in and Mey-rin handed me a wooden stick, which I moved to my mouth on autopilot, discovering as I did that it was rock candy. Sucking and crunching intermittently at this, I locked my legs against the opposite side of the cart to brace myself, slouching a little, and continued to read as Snake put aside his own book with a sigh and flicked the reins to get the horses into motion again.

_***Time Skip***_

Surprisingly enough, it was Ciel who sought _me_ out after we'd stopped at some fancy government building by the Thames, plucking casually at my sleeve and drawing me back a little as we walked towards Harrods.

"Do any of these names mean anything to you?" he asked quietly, handing me a sheaf of papers. I raised an eyebrow as I looked through them –they were death certificates, made out to six different people spanning about twenty or so years.

"Nope. They from the lockets?"

"Indeed." Ciel said, and frowned a little, evidently displeased with my lack of recognition. Tough luck –it wasn't _my_ fault I was only an apprentice and, y'know, not even native to this world or culture to begin with. Did he expect them to be people I'd heard of tangentially in the magic community? I sure as hell hadn't.

"Wasn't there supposed to be seven?" I asked as a thought occurred, paging through the papers again.

"The last one was my grandmother, Cloudia Phantomhive. I should hardly think I need _you_ to identify her and the significance of finding her on this list." Ciel huffed dismissively, then paused. "Is the number seven significant?"

I shrugged and rubbed the back of my depressingly exposed neck as Sebastian loomed –er, walked– silently behind us both. "I dunno. I guess? It's a lucky number in a lot of European cultures. I think it had virgin connotations, but I can't tell you from which country or culture. Weeks are divided into seven, and most religions regard the seventh day as holy. It has pretty important significance in Biblical lore, and some Wicca relies on it too. Multiples of seven, especially in ages, are considered powerful: fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight…honestly, I couldn't really help you unless it was in a specific context, sir. The only more-universal number of significance would be three."

Ciel sighed wearily, but didn't press the issue.

"How are things proceeding with your world ritual?" he asked instead after a moment, and I glowered at nothing in response, my shoulders sinking downwards and inwards.

"I've got the runes I need, but I'm having an…issue, with trying to attach the proper battery…stuff. I'll let you know when I get something workable." I promised, and then drifted ahead to rejoin the others when Ciel made it clear with a short nod that our conversation was over.

The displays here in Harrods were much nicer than what I was used to in the modern day, oddly enough, with more spit and polish put into them as well as far more decorations, which I chalked up to the enormous wages gap between various classes during this era.

But the thought of money made me think of _my_ money, which made me start cackling evilly and rubbing my hands in the middle of the crowded thoroughfare. Granted, I didn't know shit for dick when it came to exchange rates or inflation or whatever it was, but I knew money was worth a lot more _now_ than it was in my time, per pound. Hell, none of the stuff here at this high-end, exclusive market exceeded the £20 marker, and most of it was below fifteen. When you considered I had over £20,000, with the promise of more per week as my annual salary…

My cackling increased in pitch as a dark cloud probably bloomed around me, complete with evil little flares of energy. I had _infinity money_. Money for days. So much money, I didn't know what to do with it.

Honestly, I didn't even _have_ any plans. There was nothing I wanted or could even conceive of that might cost that much, or even half that much. But if I ever _did_ …well, the money would be there.

"Muhahahaha…!" I snickered evilly to myself, rubbing my hands together with more vigor, before blinking and coming to a halt with the others at a very familiar booth indeed. Not that I knew it, but I knew the Futom logo, which was plastered everywhere, all over candies and curry buns and some cut-glass bottles on the highest shelf.

There was also a person-sized unicorn doll-mascot…thing, gesturing slowly with its hoof towards the counter as two ladies, one behind the counter and one before, gestured as well, holding out heart-shaped cards and one of the glass bottles.

"This is a new Funtom product!"

"Won't you try this wonderful new perfume for young ladies? Please take a sample with you~!" the girl in front sang, whisking card after card from the basket on her elbow and handing them out to all of us –and I mean _all_ of us, me, Mey-rin, Finny, Bardroy, Snake, Ciel, Sebastian…Finny "yay"ed when he got his, but the others seemed less pleased.

"Why is she passing them out to men?!" Ciel spluttered, flushing a little but apparently more exasperated than flustered. "We don't need them!"

"I will have a word with the manager…" Sebastian mumbled, tucking his ribbon-bedecked card into his double-breasted jacket. "That aside…could you not have chosen something more suitable for the mascot?" he added, looking askance at the unicorn as a small child flinched and burst into tears just from standing before it.

"Funtom Cooperation uses a different icon for each product line." Ciel grumbled defensively. "We already have cats and bunnies, so…"

"…you decided to use the unicorn with young ladies in mind." Sebastian finished.

"I've heard enough. Lizzie has already given me a sound talking-to." Ciel sighed as Finny curiously sniffed his card and Bardroy and Snake passed both of theirs down to me and Mey-rin. I mimicked Sebastian and tucked my two cards inside my cleavage, since having a problem drawn to Sebastian's attention was bound to get it fixed in no uncertain terms.

Historical side note, I had been surprised to learn that one's cleavage actually _did_ make a good short-term pocket. Seeing it in movies, I'd always assumed it was some lame lowkey titillation thing, but no, when you had a neckline that went down far enough to actually expose said cleavage, the construction of the rest of the dress was generally tight enough in a line beneath the bust that you could store any number of things there, provided you didn't lean over too far or said objects weren't thin enough to slip down between your skin and the aforementioned tight bottom part of the dress fabric.

"I applaud you for turning your attention to ladies' products, the demand for which is growing remarkably…" Sebastian said as he turned his head a little to look down at Ciel, smirking slowly. "…but capturing the hearts of women with data and product quality alone seems to have missed the mark somewhat."

"H-hold your tongue!" Ciel barked, glaring at his servant. "And stop smirking! If I can invent a more effective method of advertising-"

There was a sudden crash and snapping of wood and the shrill neighing of terrified horses from the road outside, on the other side of the large plate-glass windows that led into this store, accompanied by the brief scream of a woman in utter terror.

"Wh-what was that?!" Bardroy snapped, turning to face the noise and stepping between it and Ciel as murmuring broke out around us, swelling to join the bubble of sound and clamor from outside as people gathered around what I assumed was the site of a carriage accident. Sebastian darted past him, making Bardroy splutter. "Hey, where are you goin'?!"

"Take care of the young master!" Sebastian tossed out without looking back, and was gone. We were left awkwardly standing around, many people caught mid-conversation and mid-action by the sudden disaster outside, before slowly, as no more urgent sounds came and people from outside started streaming in talking calmly, the customers and the vendors began to resume business as the comforting, droning hum of a market rose up around us.

Slowly, relaxing more in increments, Bardroy leaned back against the counter itself, while Snake, for reasons best known to himself, crouched down and then sat on the floor with his arms wrapped neatly around his knees, bulging bag full of snakes resting at his side.

We waited.

And waited.

After about ten minutes, for variety's sake, I leaned over the counter and flashed some bills to buy a bottle of the so-vaunted perfume, as well as what was functionally a lemon-flavored lollipop, which I stuck in my mouth and duly sucked on, leaning against the counter like Bardroy as Mey-rin and Finny shuffled awkwardly, looking down at Ciel with concern as he grew more and more irritated.

We waited some more.

I sucked my lollipop right down to the stick, and we kept waiting.

Using my change, I bought another lollipop, offering to treat the others in hindsight, though they all politely refused. Bardroy brought out a tin from his pocket and took out some licorice-looking thing, chewing on it in place of his usual cigarette nub as we continued to wait.

And wait some more.

It was definitely at the first hour mark that Ciel tapped his stick imperiously on the counter and was duly recognized by the manager, before a seat was rushed out for him to impatiently take his place upon, arms folded and for all the world looking like the sulky brat he technically was. And he was definitely in a sulk.

"Can't you _find a way_ to get Sebastian back here?" he growled at length, the flash of his blue eye in my directing indicating that comment was aimed towards me specifically –and the phrasing and emphasis meant magic.

"Uhhh…" I swallowed hard and tried to formulate a proper reply to that. "I've told you before, sir, I never really learned the, uh… _appropriate business techniques_ …for such things."

One finger tapped rapidly against his arm, signaling Ciel's ever-growing impatience. "And yet you have known him for many months. Can you not improvise?"

 _Ulp._

"I-in theory I could, but, erm, that's really… _really_ not a good idea. I'm sure he had a reason." I tried placatingly. "If I, ah, we interrupt that…"

"We really need to address your irrational fear of that man." Ciel grumbled under his breath in exasperation, his twitching eyebrow the only thing to interrupt his otherwise deadpan, scowling expression.

 _Then we'd need to address the fact he'd happily snap my neck if given half the chance._ I thought back, but wasn't really capable of vocalizing such a thing in this crowded area, and I didn't have Sebastian's grip of telepathy.

"I think its _perfectly_ rational." I said instead, and Ciel huffed.

"I thought the two of you made peace over the events on the _Campania?"_

"He confirmed the fact I wasn't going to…threaten his contract and was trustworthy." I said awkwardly. "Not that he liked me, or trusted me, and you know how…vindictive his, uhm, _people_ are towards people in my, ah, business."

"Mm." Ciel grunted, lapsing back into a foul mood at the reminder of his absentee butler and slouching further, angrily, in his chair. It was an oddly cute look on him, but I was under no illusions of what would happen if I tried to give him a hug or, god forbid, coo over him. I would be _lucky_ to get away with the immediate siccing of Sebastian, and probably get a black eye from the angrily flailing earl into the bargain.

We continued to wait. I began to think longingly of the books stacked inside the wagon outside, but the others –perhaps used to exhaustively longer waits due to their time period– were merely irked or concerned in their turns and didn't even seem motivated to wander off and look at the displays, though there was a certain amount of people-watching from Bardroy and Snake.

"Where could he have gone?!" Ciel eventually seethed as at least another half-hour, perhaps even another hour entirely had passed by, all but fuming in the literal sense as he folded his arms tighter across his chest and sulked. "He still hasn't come back…"

There was an odd sound approaching, a clicking, slapping sort of sound, like leather shoes against stone, except faster, and much louder, and more…staggered, like there were many pairs of feet that were…uh-oh.

"Nn?" Ciel half-turned in his chair as that sound approached at speed, before his expression rapidly cycled into naked shock with a healthy dose of terror as the floor began to shake under our feet.

A calamitous tide of fashionable young ladies roared towards us like the cresting wave of a tsunami, all frothing skirts and foaming feathers as the enormous crowd stampeded through the Harrods aisle, one and all eagerly grasping a certain heart-shaped card with a ribbon looped around the top.

As one inevitably does when faced with immediate threat of death and despair, we backed away and clustered together, huddling in a terrified, pale-faced knot around Ciel and his chair as we shrunk back in utter futility against the counter.

"There it is!" one noblewoman shrieked, with the piercing call of a hunter sighting a fox.

"Funtom's perfume!"

"A bottle of Funtom's perfume, please!"

"Me too! Me tooooo!"

"WH-WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?!" Ciel shouted over the eager cries of the crowd as we were crushed bodily between dozens of women jostling to get to the counter first, waving the cards above their heads like someone in a betting hall.

"Don't ask meeeeee!" Finny wailed from where he had been knocked to the floor, now being almost smothered between multiple voluminous skirts and probably bruised from kicking legs as well.

"Gweh!" Ciel yelped as he was picked up by the back of his suit jacket, and with a wiggle and a shove I frantically managed to push out of the literally jam-packed crowd by the counter, falling to my hands and knees on the ground outside the seething tide of women. Snake landed beside me, all but twitching in catatonia as Mey-rin pushed through them with a gasp, somehow still standing, and Finny crawled out with a desperate Bardroy clinging to his ankle like a drowning man with a rope.

"How wretchedly you are yelping." Sebastian said as he held Ciel above the crowd by his waist.

"Sebastian!" Ciel cried furiously, holding his bowler hat to keep it on his head as Sebastian turned to set him down. "What have you been doing all this –wait."

We all stared at the unicorn mascot uniform hanging loose around Sebastian's ribs, with the head lying discarded beside him on the ground.

 _"Why in the world are you dressed like that?!"_ Ciel vocalized all our thoughts, and Sebastian blinked innocently as he began to climb out of the costume.

"I went out for a bit to promote the perfume."

"Hunh?" Ciel asked flatly.

"The scream you heard." Sebastian expanded. "I thought I recognized the voice. It belonged to Miss Irene Diaz, and I made a deal with her in exchange for my aid."

"That's what you were up to…?"

Sebastian smirked, dipping into his double-breasted coat with two fingers to pull out the sample card. "I am butler to the Phantomhive Family." he said, before flicking the card up to rest against his cheek. "It goes without saying I can double the sales of a new product."

Ciel sighed grudgingly. "Well…I suppose I won't have to spend more on advertisements." he admitted, before glancing over to see the crowd of women still crushing against the counter and waving their cards in the air. "Still…to think using a star to advertise a product would be so effective…"

"Heh. That is the mentality of the masses for you, young master."

I nodded wisely, then stepped forward to face Sebastian and put my hands on my hips.

"Fair enough, but what took you so long about it, then?"

"Ah, I had to lead them back here after the play concluded, so…"

"YOU WAITED FOR THE ENTIRE PLAY TO END?!"

I wasn't the only one to shriek those words with all the bottled-up fury of several hours of impatience, but I did bonk the demonic butler on the top of his skull just before Bardroy grabbed him by the collar and started shaking, so…team effort.

Ciel looked as though he would've liked to join in, but his dignity prevented him from doing anything but glaring smugly at Sebastian as Bardroy shook him like he was trying to turn the demon's skull into a blender for his brain and Mey-rin and Finny sobbed over him like a pair of abandoned puppies. I kind of shuffled awkwardly back to join Snake and Ciel, since I wasn't quite sure how loose my license was in actually physically attacking Sebastian even as a half-joking effort.

Damn, it had felt good though. _Months_ of catharsis, just in that one hand-to-frustratingly-hard-skull overhand chop.

Maybe I could buy a body pillow of him when I got home and then skin said pillow, before attaching the pillowcase to my own personal punching bag.

_Okay, but first I need to actually **get** a punching bag…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: May 6th, 2020, 1.57 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: May 6th, 2020, 12.57 AM USA Central Time


	58. That Butler, Rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May I finish this soon...the less I have to acknowledge how GODAMN LONG it's taken me to write this one, the happier I'll be. Soon it'll be done and finished and I can work on the next one free of any crushing looming shame from my two-year hiatus. Ah, bliss...
> 
> For those that don't know, witches' sabbaths (not Wicca ones) were basically considered orgies for all manner of witches and their associate evil creatures, held annually and accompanied by much liquor, evil spells, and probably sacrificing babies or something. In German folklore, for instance, Walpurgisnacht (Walpurgis Night) was a witches' sabbath held on the Brocken, highest peak of the Harz Mountains, where they partied hard as ordinary folk celebrated May Day and St. Walpurga's festival to protect themselves from ensuing black magic.
> 
> The joke here is that Ciel is poking fun at Sebastian for appearing at one, since again, witch sabbaths were allegedly a bunch of witches, demons, and evil spirits just getting absolutely wasted and committing various debaucheries. There's even a bit in Goethe's _Faust_ about Walpurgisnacht in particular, where a demon dancing with a witch (maybe Mephistopheles himself, it's been a while since I've read the play) talks about "grinding [her] hole with [his] monstrous thumping pole" which is. UM. Yeah. Goethe did not fuck about when it came to dirty language in that play.
> 
> Anyways Sebastian probably at least _attended_ a wasted witch orgy once send tweet.
> 
> I’m also able to identify the sigil on the pendants the members of the Wolfsschlucht have not because I know things, but because, oddly enough, a near-identical sign was used in _Uminkeo_.
> 
> Also also, I used Google Translate for the German, since its been forever and a half since I learned it and I'm not at all confident in my ability to produce German, though I can understand it reasonably well. Native German speakers, don't be afraid to school me in what the proper translation is!

_Arya's POV:_

" _Invoco lapis placant essentia metamorphic petram placant ignei esse petram placant essentia sedimentary petra veto quin ex omnibus. Absit ut nostræ humilitátis ingréssum. A me artem magicam veto ea loca misit. Absit hoc a me magicae fabrica ut per haec miscent_ …" I recited carefully in Latin, furrowing my brow a little bit as I slowly drew out the complex twist that stood for all the types of stone in the _Black Butler_ universe. My skin was damp with sweat from the August heat and the amount of finely tuned concentration necessary to draw out these runes and recite the corresponding invocations at the same time. I wasn't channeling magic into anything, not yet: just repeating the words and drawing the lines, getting in some good practice.

"Ahem."

I briefly paused, my shoulders stiffening, before I flicked a glance towards my floating journal and continued, moving on to the next section.

" _Invoco terram invoco ipsa arena soli placant essentia foliis putridis placant essentia lutum veto quin ex omnibus. Absit ut nostræ humilitátis ingréssum. A me artem magicam veto ea loca misit. Absit hoc a me magicae fabrica ut per haec miscent._ "

" _Ahem_." Sebastian coughed, slightly louder. I briefly freed one hand from my stick/staff to shoo urgently at him without looking around, before I stepped to the side to continue drawing.

" _Invoco plantarum ipsum invoco arboribus ipsum invoco vites ipsum invoco fruticum placant essentia floribus veto quin ex omnibus. Absit_ -"

"Miss Thompson."

"- _ut nostræ humilitátis ingréssum_." I continued loudly. " _A me artem magicam veto ea loca misit. Absit hoc a me magicae fabrica ut per haec miscent_."

What really ground my gears was the fact I couldn't tell him to _shut up_ –or at least, not without stopping and ruining my practice, which was kinda what I was trying to avoid. I didn't know why Sebastian was here, or what he wanted, but he could at least have the common human decency to wait until I was finished. (Er, well, you know what I mean.)

The fact that the fastest that I had ever clocked myself doing this was about three hours was neither here nor there. He could be patient and _wait_.

"I do hope you know the barrier you set up is nowhere near strong enough to prevent me from entering."

"Ack!"

I hastily turned around, seeing that Sebastian was standing ominously close to the line of my barrier, an amused look on his face and a smirk curling his lips.

"Dude, don't you dare!" I blurted before I could stop myself. I'd only cleansed this place of his energies, which had seeped out steadily across the estate as a matter of course of him just being here in proximity –I did _not_ want the extra workload of trying to purify ground he had actually stepped on! "You- _goddamnit!"_

I groaned and hucked my staff at the ground as I realized he'd successfully ruined my practice.

"Whyyyy?!"

"Don't be so needlessly overdramatic." Sebastian huffed, before making as if to step forwards. "You are out here every day-"

"No! No no no!" I yelped as I quickly scuttled forward, stopping him just shy of the line of my wards. " _Do not_ step over the line."

Sebastian rolled his eyes, but stopped before I had to try to shove him away.

"Regardless, you practice creating your sigil every day without fail, multiple times in the day, and have been doing so for month." he drawled. "A single interruption will not ruin your efforts."

There might, maybe, have been an infinestably small compliment buried somewhere in there, but I was too busy glaring at him to look for it.

"Yeah, whatever. Hasn't helped me get any closer to finishing." I said, then sighed and folded my arms. "What did you want?"

"Your audacity of believing I would ever want anything to do with your presence remains consistently amusing." Sebastian said with an angelic smile, before he placed his hand over his chest and gave me a slight bow. "It is the young master who requires your attention, immediately."

"Since he sent you, I'm guessing I don't get the option to refuse." I sighed, then turned back to the clearing before Sebastian could answer. "Gimme a sec to clean up."

I scuffed out what parts of the sigil I had completed with my foot and picked up my staff again, putting it in my crate before crossing the barrier I'd set up to disallow magic absorption and block other people from coming in. Sebastian, what with his inhuman competence, had already saddled Dämon and was waiting with his reins in fist.

"So, what's all this about then?" I asked as I mounted, up, carefully guiding Dämon to step back and sideways so I could get back to the path.

Sebastian looked up at me silently for a moment as we started back to the estate, then glanced ahead once more.

"…what do you know of witches and familiars?" he asked slowly, and I blinked, perking up a little. Those two topics in conjunction meant one thing and only one thing: the Emerald Witch arc, and accompanying adorable small German "witch."

"Uh, allegedly witches had animal familiars that they fed blood or whatever, and in turn the animals did their bidding or helped power their magic or whatever. Usually its like a black cat or a rooster or a toad or something." I said, rocking a little in place as I held Dämon at a walk as we moved down the path. "My mentor had one, but he wasn't a witch, and he attracted his familiar after decades of working magic, and there weren't any blood rituals or nothin'."

Sebastian raised a single perfect eyebrow. "And what sort of familiar was this?"

"An absolutely _adorable_ glowing green rabbit with wings." I said with a fond smile, remembering how snuggly it had been. "He called it Flying Mint Bunny."

"A glowing green rabbit with wings." Sebastian repeated in that carefully toneless way that told me he was inordinately amused by that statement. "An interesting choice for a magician."

"Oh shut up. It was cute as hell –no relation to you– and I do not need to justify Britain's familiar. Why are we discussing this? New mission?"

" _Allegedly_ , men and women have been struck down through unexplained means in Germany." Sebastian said, placing heavy stress on the first word. "Upon investigation, the young master has learned that their deaths and disfigurements are allegedly the work of a witch's curse, wherein the victims had traveled to a certain forest witches had claimed as their sanctuary and released their werewolf familiars to protect."

I snorted inelegantly. "Werewolf familiars? Seriously?"

"I agree, it is implausible at best." Sebastian said briskly as he walked alongside me and the horse. I was kinda enjoying the ability to look down on him, for now at least. "Such creatures are not in the habit of obedience or subservience. Still…there are mavericks in every race. It is just barely possible that one has become a guard dog, or that a breeding pair has been tamed and their offspring raised in domesticity."

"I guess I get why Ciel wanted me for this." I sighed. "But –I mean, really? You guys do know I get my magic knowledge from a different world and all? _And_ my magic books here are delivered instead of me shopping for them. I'm not exactly "in" the supernatural community."

"Nonetheless, this is a mission that seems uniquely suited to your abilities, limited as they are."

"Roast me alive, why don't you."

"Is that an offer?"

"Ha ha ha ha ha." I said, enunciating every syllable. " _No_."

"You've mentioned before that you've spent some time in Germany." Sebastian sighed, dropping the subject of immolating me with some disappointment and a casualness that belied how eagerly he'd get to work if it were actually allowable. "Might I ask if you speak German?"

"Yup."

" _Fluently_?"

"Eh…" I bobbed my head from side to side as Dämon clopped along. "I can speak, like, standard Modern German fluently. Dialects? Whatever changes have been made between my time and this? Probably not so much."

"State something in German, if you would."

 _"Was?"_ I asked with a cheeky grin, and caught an annoyed flash of his eye as Sebastian turned his head a little to look up at me. Familiarity, however, begat a certain level of contempt: whereas towards the beginning of my tenure at this estate such a look from Sebastian would have sent me cowering behind Mey-rin or whoever else was nearest, now it merely made my grin turn to sheepish instead of cheeky.

"A _full_ sentence, if you please."

"Uh, right…" I scratched the back of my head. Strangely enough, being asked to say a sentence out of the blue was surprisingly hard –like, what did one talk about? What subject did you just yoink out of nothing to use?

_"Ich habe in meinem Garten gearbeitet, als du gekommen bist, um mich zu unterbrechen, Arschloch."_

"I cannot detect any specific differences." Sebastian said after a moment. "And I must ask, once more and without hope, that you refrain from speaking your profanity so freely. Perhaps modern times give you some leniency in this area, but we will be on the Continent, and for a young lady of apparent good breeding, in service to an earl, to speak like a crass sailor would, for our investigation, be… _unfortunate_."

I flinched away from the cloud of evil intent radiating from him.

"Message received, loud and clear. I'm not that bad, am I?"

"I ask you to recount any statement you have made within recent memory that does not include a profanity in it."

"Okay, you know what, _fuck_ you!"

"My point exactly."

"Graaaaah!"

"Shouting like a madwoman would not help our case either."

"Sebastian, I fear you greatly, but I _will_ try to do something unfortunate if you keep needling me like this." I growled from atop my horse, eye twitching. "I'm a magician! I can fuck you up!"

"The key word, my dear fool, is _try_."

One of these days I was gonna pay back this damn demon for all of his effortless aggravation, and it would be swift, painful, and _glorious_.

But in the meantime, I had packing to do.

_***Time Skip***_

_Chug-chug-chug-chug._

_Clnk-clnk-clnk-clnk-clnk-clnk-clnk…_

Back braced against the rattling side of the second-class train carriage I was packed inside with Mey-rin, I was busy paging through a thick envelope that Ciel had carelessly passed me before our first series of conjunctions with the train and the boat across the Channel, before hopscotching across France in a series of hotels and more train connections. Sure, I probably should have read it earlier, but the late nights and groggy mornings that came with the complex dance of our bookings had, quite frankly, left me too exhausted over these past few days to do more than stumble in the right directions and keep myself fed and tangentially bathed, since pitchers of water were generally available for a quick scrubdown.

The first of the papers was, as noted in Ciel's impeccably neat handwriting, a copy of our orders from the Queen.

`There have been a succession of mysterious deaths in Southern Germany. Her Majesty was informed that those of sound body and mind suddenly became deformed and then expired. Assistance was offered in case of there being an epidemic, but neither the Kaiser nor his government have provided a straight answer. A formal envoy cannot be deployed, hence, our position. We are to travel to Germany and discover the source of this contagion, and remove it if necessary.`

Next, was a page that was a more personal copy of orders from Ciel directly to me.

`Age, sex, and standing of the victims all varied. There were no signs of infectious disease in the areas the fatalities had occurred. The deceased had no chronic illnesses, nor had they suffered any injuries. When asked for cause of death, the surviving locals all answered that "the witch's curse" had killed them. All victims lived in areas bordering a wood apparently termed the Werewolves' Forest, allegedly infested with the werewolf familiars of witches who had escaped the German trials of the 14th-17th centuries, who then turned these werewolves loose to prevent entry.`

`We shall travel to Nuremberg, which is the largest city closest to the events, with several victims in one of the outlying districts. Directly questioning the locals will lead our investigations from there: I will ask that you immediately state any magical activity you sense or spy to either myself or Sebastian. Your observations will be useful in this case.`

`Should we have need to investigate the forest itself, I will again ask that you accompany myself and any others and obey my orders immediately and without argument therein.`

The other pages were a list of various victims and their minutiae, as well as a map of the area we'd be investigating, and several pages of what seemed to be historical and folkloric research either Ciel or Sebastian had collected on German magic and mythological creatures. This I read, but to my disappointment there was nothing in there that I wasn't vaguely familiar with already. As far as folklore went, Germany didn't do a lot of the bestiary stuff like, say, England or some of their Slavic neighbors. Their fairy tales focused more on recurring character archetypes and human characters, and subsequently (generally) their supernatural creatures weren't that numerous. Technically speaking, that was more of a reversal: fairy tales got told because people had seen or heard of the creatures, the creatures weren't shaped by fairy tales being told.

Of course, there was a bunch of cultural overlap: supernatural creatures that went just about anywhere, and creatures that followed behind their native people when they moved into the area and subsequently hung around after those people died out or blended into the local population, so on and so forth. So that wasn't to say Germany was _completely_ bare, just…sparse.

Drat. Learning about new folkloric stuff was always fun.

I paused and leaned forward to crack my neck a little, before leaning back into my prior position as I flipped through my little sheaf of double-folded papers, idly trying to dredge up my memories of what, exactly, was going on in that forest.

To the best of my memory, it was some weird Scooby-Doo-esque scheme arranged by the government that built an elaborate sham around Sieglinde to get her to focus solely on creating some form of nerve gas or something, which of course was why Germany hadn't been exactly gnawing at the bit to get help from England. It was 1889, after all, and less than thirty years into the future, we'd have WWI. Wars on that scale didn't just grow up overnight: it had been the result of years, _decades_ of building up power and flexing international muscles at other European countries as they amassed more and more technology on the assumption that having _this much_ would _surely_ ensure their victory, just like it had to all the other poor bastards in "less civilized" countries that had gotten colonized.

Eh, anyways. Stockpiling military might, Britain was a likely future target, they didn't want us snooping around.

There was, I admit, a tickle of unease beneath my breastbone, because I hadn't actually… _finished_ the manga arc of this event. Oh, sure, I'd heard some bits and pieces about what came after, something about a music hall and Lizzie going missing and Yana Toboso putting in thinly veiled boybands, but I didn't exactly…know the details…of how _this_ ended. Or really, anything after this.

Eh, I'd be fine. I'd totally be fine.

Yeah, totally.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah…

I swallowed thickly, and then jolted, quickly tucking the papers into my bosom again as the train whistled, coming to a slow halt. Mey-rin and I quickly grabbed our valises and clamped a hand down on our hats to hold them in place, stumbling to our feet as the train wavered and shook to a complete halt. We flew out the doors in a blink, hastily scampering over to where the boys were yanking their own luggage –and in Finny's case, Ciel's luggage as well– behind them. The hassle of the threat of being left behind and any of the other many, manifold dangers of travel –because apparently what good travel karma I had had been used up or negated by one of the others– we had experienced on the trip thus far had left us frazzled and jumpy. Thankfully, this was our last stop, but still.

We grabbed the appropriate boxes and trunks and hauled them to a nearby carriage, which rattled off towards the outskirts of the city as I took a deep, happy breath.

"Ah, I missed Bavaria." I said contentedly.

"You've been before?" Bardroy asked, one brow cocked.

"I lived in Munich for a little bit." I explained, jabbing a thumb vaguely towards the south. "With a military man and his brother."

"Will they be of any use on this mission?" Sebastian asked for form's sake, and I made a face.

"Eh…probably not. Ludwig would follow written directions even if they directed him off the side of a bridge, and his brother's something of a…rapscallion. He doesn't really _do_ responsibility and stuff."

"Mm."

Sebastian fell silent as the others started to pelt me with questions about what Germany, and this part of it particularly, was like. I answered as carefully as I could, unable to say much about the urban aspects, but on much firmer ground when it came to parks, outdoors, and cultural things like food. Lots of bread stuff here, and of course the infamous sausages that individual cities took such pride in. And beer, too, obviously, but Germany would've wrung Prussia's neck if he caught him offering me alcohol.

Not that that _stopped_ Prussia, note, but it did make him cut me off before I got more than a few sips in on anything. So taste-wise, I could talk the talk, but I couldn't walk the walk (perhaps literally) when Bardroy asked me things like alcohol content and strength.

We made it to a nice little inn with the familiar black beams, white plaster, and thatched roof, and I grinned as I hopped out of the carriage with the others. Even in another dimension and another time, it was nice to be back.

"I will be off to start our investigation." Ciel said briskly, dusting himself off a little. "Meet us back at this address with the luggage." he added, handing a paper, probably with directions or translations, to Snake. "Barring any changes of plan, we will be staying here."

As Ciel turned off towards the busy street filled with market stalls, Sebastian's eyes flicked towards me, and he inclined his head the same way. Apparently, I was to follow, and I guessed it was because we were going to interrogate either a victim or a close associate thereof.

My guess was halfway correct, since we soon hunted down what was, apparently, the local old coot NPC. Nominally, he was some kind of wagon driver and/or carter, but he seemed content to answer our questions and, allegedly, knew something about something.

Ciel, however, did not.

"Hey…Sebastian…" he said weakly as the man grunted a greeting at us. "What language are they speaking?"

"East Franconian. It is a southern German dialect." Sebastian answered promptly, and Ciel squawked at him.

"The dialect is too strong! My studies were practically useless! I can't even follow what they're saying!"

"Hehe." I grinned smugly, since I was able to at least loosely puzzle through it, and Sebastian smirked, touching a hand to his mouth.

"The fundamentals are vital in everything, young master." he said primly. Ciel's eye twitched, before he turned in the direction of the man.

"So…what's he saying."

" _'Ach, I ain't gonna go bite it from the witch's curse. No thanks.'_ " Sebastian translated after he asked the man whether or not he'd be willing to take us into the forest. " _'Dun matter how much gold you got, no's a no.'_ So he says."

"You don't need to translate the dialect into your interpretation! Has he seen an accursed human?" Ciel snapped, glancing up briefly at Sebastian before returning his eyes to the man.

 _"Hast du einen dieser verfluchten Menschen gesehen?"_ the butler asked obediently.

 _"I sure did! They looked somethin' awful."_ the man exclaimed in German, waving his arms in illustration. _"Their faces were swollen to twice the normal size. And their skin looked like it'd melted into a thick mud! One died right off. The other lived, but word has it he went nuts from the shock."_

I winced.

 _"Der andere hat überlebt?"_ Sebastian asked, undisturbed. _The other one survived?_

 _"Yep. He was all shook up with fear, and kept screamin' 'The wolfman's coming!'"_ the man answered.

_"Wo ist er jetzt?" So where is he now?_

The man looked sidelong under his cap. _"He's the eldest son of the Briegel family, rich folk who live on the outskirts of this village, but he's gone now. The government came 'n took him away to some big hospital in case whatever he had caught, and they took the dead 'un away too."_

Sebastian looked down at Ciel, who glanced away from the man with a raised eyebrow.

"There is a survivor, but he was intensely confused and kept repeating 'The wolfman's coming.'" he said in English, and Ciel perked up.

"So he's seen the wolfman?"

"Government officials took him away to a major institution along with the other victim." Sebastian said, dashing his hopes. "Will you search all the hospitals in this country?"

"No need." Ciel sighed. "There isn't any point in speaking to a madman. We should go at once to this "Werewolves' Forest" ourselves."

"However, the man refuses to take us in his carriage no matter how much we offer." Sebastian told him, shrugging elegantly.

Ciel smirked.

"Then ask him…how much the _carriage_ costs."

_***Time Skip***_

A bit more money convinced the man to help us drive the carriage back to our meeting spot, since neither Ciel nor I could drive and controlling two carriages in a crowded street was beyond even Sebastian's skill –or at least, the skill Ciel would let him show. Sebastian left the two-horse one to Mey-rin and the others, and got in to drive the slightly nicer, though still open, one-horse one himself, with me guiltily climbing in alongside Ciel. The more I lived here, the more uncomfortable I was with the projected class difference between me and the other servants, since I was, allegedly, at least one cut above them and I was frequently treated in a slightly-more-exclusive manner. Sure, it was because I was a magician, but they didn't know that, and it certainly had to chafe at least a little bit to see me swanning about with all the special treatment when I wasn't _that_ much more special than them.

Oh well. I'd just have to get Mey-rin a really neat hat and maybe make up the rest of it to the others with books, explosions, and maybe something colorful for Finny, like a hard-wearing jacket or new gloves, since he seemed to love taking care of plants so much.

Whatever else there was about this forest, there was a path, seemingly guarded only by reputation and fear, so at least we didn't have to try and drive over rocks, sticks, and stones, which was uncomfortable at best and agonizingly aggravating at worst, even if you weren't the one driving. Things got stuck, riders had to go out and help them get unstuck…it was a hassle.

Typical of the _Schwarzwald_ region, the forest itself was filled with dark pines and other cold-hardy trees, maintaining a constant canopy that left the ground bereft of ordinary shrubbery. What did grow on the ground was small, stuff that would flourish over a summer before wilting or continuing to stretch upwards next growing season, and as such, you could see a surprisingly far distance…or so you thought. The green of pine needles and leaves blended together into a green wall, interspersed with trunks twisted and bent by long, heavy winter snows, and a faint fog drifted in and out of those twisting shapes, making everything murky and obscuring details. You could see for yards across the forest –until you couldn't. Until you started wondering where your exact line of sight stopped and where the monotonous green and stripes of darker bark that was the forest simply blended together into the vague far distance. It was like an optical illusion, and that alone was enough to engender unease in someone unused to forests, but of course, since we were in an area of mountainous slopes and water-carved ravines, there were gullies, dips, gorges and gulches all throughout the lay of the land, dipping and bending the ground and hiding a thousand secret pockets all across the forest floor, places to hide, and places for things to be hidden, holes to trip over and tumble down…

Interesting and neat as a brief visit during a sunny day, not so much when the place had a reputation to be haunted and it was overcast.

I knew all or at least most of the curse-related stuff was a sham, but that didn't stop the back of my neck from prickling uncomfortably when Sebastian pulled something out of the inner reaches of his greatcoat less than an hour after we had started into the forest.

"The compass has begun to drift." he said quietly.

"It may just be that mineral resources are buried around here." Ciel said negligently, seemingly unbothered by the forest's atmosphere or the constant rattling of our squeaky wheels.

"It may just as easily be…a curse." Sebastian said with a slow look over his shoulder, smirking ominously.

"I can't believe-" Ciel huffed, but his butler stopped him.

"It amuses me that you refuse to believe in curses when you have a devil for a servant and have come eye-to-eye with Grim Reapers. Moreover…that which binds you and I-" Sebastian lifted one of his white-gloved hands and wiggled the fingers, reminding Ciel (and me, since I knew of it from outside this world) of the contract mark branded onto the back of his hand. "-is also a curse of sorts."

"However," Ciel said pointedly. "-witches were humans falsely accused at ridiculous trials. They didn't fly in the sky or create storms. Its absurd to believe in supernatural entities like a curse. Correct, Thompson? You create your magic through rituals."

"Eh? Oh, yeah." I said, startled into movement by his sudden address of me. I'd been busy listening in admiration to the spoken equivalent of something I had read ages ago. "I do my stuff like a recipe –I mix or make the ingredients, and sure, maybe it has a lasting effect, but that'd be something I cast intentionally to begin with. Can't say that's how everyone does things _around here_ , y'know."

"Well now, I wonder." Sebastian murmured.

Ciel and I exchanged mutually curious looks, before he addressed his butler.

"By the way, have you ever met a real witch?"

"Yes." Sebastian answered dismissively. "I have met those who went by that moniker on several occasions before."

Ciel snorted. "Did they summon you to the witches' sabbath and worship you?" he asked mockingly.

"Summoning devils and worshipping them –I do not believe sabbaths were held for that purpose." Sebastian mused aloud, his voice clinical, detached. "They were times of social interaction for depraved adults, who wished to escape reality by sinking into debauchery. Offering us their souls in exchange for their desires…one cannot summon us devils without that degree of determination."

"Given as you know so very much about it, I'm gonna guess you _did_ go to a witches' sabbath at least once." I said after a moment, and Sebastian shrugged demurely.

"A gentleman would never kiss and tell." he said, glancing over his shoulder with a wry smile, before looking ahead again as we began to sink into a valley between two not-quite-mountains. Sebastian tugged the horse to a slower walk, nearly having it step over its own feet to keep us from sliding forward too fast, though thankfully the slope was not overly steep. Looking up at the large stone crags peeking through the forest, I realized that this place would be an excellent spot to put a building you didn't want someone to find, since it lay in a fold between two taller shoulders of rock and earth covered in trees, effectively hiding whatever might be here until you were right on top of it.

And apparently, I wasn't the first person to get that idea.

Sebastian straightened a little from his spot in the driver's seat of the carriage. "Oho."

Leanign to the side, he pointed further ahead of us through the trees.

"Young master, please see for yourself. There are buildings over there."

And what buildings they were –fundamentally identical to the timber and plaster we'd left behind in Nuremberg, but the decorations, now those were ornate, lopsided, and just plain witchy. Everything was conical and pointed, right down to the lanterns lit atop a pair of square stone pillars that apparently marked the boundary of this small village. In the distance, rising above the misty trees, I could see the skewed, oddly-stacked formation of some kind of twisting tower, one that defied architectural logic as it leaned one side and then bent back the other, widening, shrinking, until it finally spindled out into a needle-thin conical roof.

"Wow." I said dumbly. "Wonder how they built that?"

"Magic?" Ciel suggested, raising an eyebrow.

"Not the kind of magic I know." I mumbled, before we heard the other servants ooh and ah over the sudden village we had discovered. Sebastian kept the horse at a walk until we reached the flat bit near the village boundary, reining in the horse before dismounting from the carriage, with me following behind and Sebastian helping Ciel out with one hand. The others dismounted as well, and we all gathered together, staring in surprise and maybe a little bit of awe at the small settlement. I, personally, shivered as I saw the wide swath of gravestones that lay between us and the village proper.

Whoever made this place committed to the detail and the aesthetic, I'll give 'em that.

Sebastian briskly stepped forward with Ciel barely a half-step behind, and the rest of us trailed after them. I was comforted to see Snake had his bulging satchel of snakes, which at the very least should give anyone trying anything smart a moment's pause before one of the rest of us nailed them.

"No one's around." Ciel noted as we walked into the village, peering all around as his cane scuffed quietly against the soft dirt. "Is it abandoned?"

"No." Sebastian answered as he looked at a well that could've come out of a child's cartoon. "The houses have been kept up. I am certain people do live here."

"Heyyy!" Finny yelled before anyone could stop him. "Is anybody heee-"

Wooden doors and shutters banged open all along the street, and the rapid banging of a ladle against a frying pan made me wince.

 _"Eindringlinge! Alle, komm raus und kämpfe!"_ someone's piercing cry rose out as a horde of medieval-dressed women surged out of the houses and surrounded us, all of them carrying some kind of farming implement. I saw hand scythes, pitchforks, axes, and a number of other things I didn't have the names for, but all of which were sharp and pointy.

_Intruders! Everybody, come out and fight!_

"Talk about a warm welcome." Bardroy grumbled from behind me as we all bunched up, slowly raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. He might not get what they were saying, since I didn't think he spoke German, but the malice and distrust in the eyes of the women surrounding us was clear, as was the way they were aiming their tools at us. They wanted us out, or dead, or both. Probably both.

I blinked as I noticed that they were all wearing some kind of medal-like necklace or medallion around their necks, hung by a broad green ribbon. The pendant was a covex golden circle about the size of my hand, covered in an odd inscription that looked something like a Greek cross…wait.

My foot swished out sideways and smacked into the side of Sebastian's shin as I kept my eyes focused on the women around us, raising my hands like Bardroy and forcefully projecting an aura of…heck, I don't know how to describe it, inquiry? at Sebastian. I certainly got a sense of inquiry in return, terse and distracted.

**?**

_The medallions they're wearing –it's the seventh pentacle of the sun from the Key of Solomon. Letters are Hebrew. On the arms of the cross are the names of the angels that govern the four elements: Chasan, Arel, Phorlakh, and Taliahad. In the diagonals between the four arms are the four kings who rule those elements: Ariel, Seraph, Tharshis, and Cherub. Psalm 116:16-17 from the Old Testament around the outside, 'Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder. I will offer unto thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord.' Its supposed to be a bond-breaking thing, something to set you free metaphorically or physically._

It was amazing how fast you could rattle off information when you didn't have to use your mouth and tongue to do it.

_There, uh, there was something else on the page it was written on…_

**'The seventh and last pentacle of the Sun. If any be by chance imprisoned or detained in fetters of iron, at the presence of this pentacle, which should be engraved in Gold on the day and hour of the Sun, he will be immediately delivered and set at liberty.'**

_That…sounds a lot like it, yeah. Fuck you. How would you even know that?_

**I may read what I wish, when I wish it. Your prompting jogged loose some associations.**

_So, how come all the witches here have the seventh pentacle of the sun dangling around their necks like its some kind of badge?_

**I believe that is one of the many things we shall endeavor to find out.**

Meanwhile, alongside this flicker-quick ribbon of conversation between Sebastian and I, we were being insulted.

 _"Who are you bastards?!"_ one particularly aggressive woman with a sharpened hoe asked in German, brandishing it towards us. _"How did you find your way here!?"_

 _We took the path that literally leads right up to your doorstep._ I thought sardonically, but didn't say, nor project it towards Sebastian.

"Tell them we would like to speak to their lord." Ciel hissed, safely behind Sebastian's broad back and in the center of our little group.

"Yes, sir." Sebastian answered, then raised his hands placatingly. _"Wir meinen keinen Schaden. Wir bitten um eine Audienz bei Ihrem Lehnsherrn."_

_We mean no harm. We beg an audience with your liege lord._

This did not seem to go over well.

 _"Was?!"_ the woman who seemed to be a leader hissed, her expression sharpening. _"Unser Liege…"_

 _"Could they be targeting the honorable Sullivan?!"_ another cried as murmuring broke out amongst the crowd. It sounded hostile.

"Sullivan?" Sebastian asked aloud, and Ciel shifted uneasily. He might not understand the words exactly, but he could certainly detect tone and posture.

"Hey, what are they-"

 _"QUIET!"_ roared the woman who was apparently in charge. _"You villains must be betrayers!"_

 _"B-betrayers!?"_ Finny stammered. _"We're not-"_

 _"We will spare none of your ilk!"_ one woman cried.

 _"Don't let them escape alive!"_ added another.

_"DEATH TO BETRAYERS!"_

_"DEATH TO BETRAYERS!"_

Sebastian's arm shot out protectively over Ciel as the rest of us instinctively bent our knees a little, huddling inwards and preparing to meet the charge of the mob as Mey-rin reached inside her skirts and Snake's hand crept towards the flap of his satchel. I had one hand on my Colt, but honestly, if it came to fighting, I wanted to start blasting with my magic, if only to see the look of utter and complete astonishment on all these fraud's faces before Sebastian and the rest got them.

Lying to someone as small and cute as Sieglinde was unforgivable.

 _"What is the meaning of this?!"_ a harsh voice suddenly broke out over the others, and instant, respectful silence fell.

 _"Th-the honorable Sullivan!"_ our lead aggressor gasped as the women instinctively drew aside, making way for a truly enormous tree-trunk of a man and bowing as they did. _"Our apologies for letting intruders enter the village!"_

 _"Are you…the honorable Sullivan, the liege lord?"_ Sebastian asked slowly as this giant approached us, coming to a sharp stop.

 _"Indeed."_ said the small, elfin girl sitting carelessly in his arms like he was some sort of carriage purely for her convenience. _"I am Sieglinde Sullivan, liege of this forest!"_

I made a sound not unlike a fangirl squealing at a concert before launching myself forward, though I came to an abrupt halt not a second later, jolting like I would in a roller coaster that had just slammed it's brakes as Sebastian quickly snapped his arm out against my stomach to stop me going forward, before he then grabbed my shoulder to keep me from trying to move again, holding me in place with an iron grip.

" _Need I remind you_ that a perceived attack on the liege lord _would cost us all our lives_?" Sebastian ground out in English around an angelic smile, and I whimpered, looking longingly towards a confused-looking Sieglinde as she tilted her head from her place seated in the man's arms.

"Just one hug. Just one! I want to squeeze her like a teddy bear! She's so _tiny_!"

"Thompson I can, and _will_ , bind and gag you."

"It's worth it! Its so totally worth it! Look at her, she's so cute~!"

Sebastian looked over his shoulder. "Young master, do we truly need Miss Thompson's assistance at this moment?" he asked with a subtle undertone of hope.

"Sebastian, you are not tying her up." Ciel sighed.

"I can arrange a more permanent solution."

" _No_."

"Eh, Miss Arya, maybe we should wait until we've got the other greetings out of the way before we start doing that, yes?" Mey-rin suggested, looking nervously at the pointed implements all around that were still being somewhat brandished at us.

"Yeah, like maybe making sure these ladies don't want to spike us." Bardroy said bluntly.

"I want to snuggle her! I _need_ to snuggle her! Sebastian, let _go_!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: May 15th, 2020, 12.14 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: May 14th, 2020, 11.46 AM USA Central Time


	59. That Butler, Briolette

_Arya's POV:_

As Sebastian held me in place like his life depended on it –and it probably would if he had been human– the guy actually carrying Sieglinde marched towards in a series of brisk, quick steps. In an odd contrast to his neatly trimmed sideburns, his silver hair was thick, short, and wild, nominally slicked back in a way that I felt just emphasized rather than subdued the fluffy clumps. Something about the jabot hanging over his chest and the cut of his military-esque buttoned coat made me think "manservant," like one of those ones you saw grabbing the master's horses or bowing at the door in some old Gothic movies. His eyes were a hazel that flirted around being green, and at the moment, narrowed aggressively as he thrust his face right into Sebastian's.

 _"And from whence do you hail, peon?"_ he growled. "Hunh?!"

 _"Enough, Wolfram."_ Sieglinde said, casually smacking him in the forehead and making him lurch back slightly with a yelp.

 _"Excuse us,"_ she apologized as Sebastian and Ciel sweatdropped a little, watching her continue to carelessly tug on one of the longer bits of Wolfram's bangs, yanking short cries from him with every tug. _"It has been quite some time since we last had visitors in the village. Moreover…"_

She glanced past me towards Ciel, and then stared harder. And stared. Stared…

Ciel shuffled his feet a little under the unrelenting pressure of her stare, and Wolfram, now that she had finally stopped tugging on his hair, coughed into his hand and straightened, cradling Sieglinde with his other hand and arm.

 _"I don't know how you managed to reach us, but here in our village of Wolfssclucht, outsiders are not welcome to stay."_ He increased the force of his glare. _"Now that we're clear, go back to where you came from!"_

"Best retreat and consider alternative approaches, I think." Ciel whispered to Sebastian after this had been duly translated.

"Yes, sir." Sebastian responded promptly, and turned, smiling a cheerful smile as he gathered the others and steered me in the opposite direction of Sieglinde by both hands clamped on my shoulders, all but pushing me towards the village exit. _"Very well,"_ he addressed Wolfram. _"-then we will take our lea-"_

_"Wait!"_

We came to a stop again, and I nervously reached for my gun as the women around us all leveled their weapons at our group again.

 _"You and your party don't seem to understand how fortunate you are to have passed through the forest unscathed."_ Wolfram said as he crunched towards us, and Sebastian turned a little, squeezing my shoulders so hard I winced to remind me not to lunge towards the adorable creature in Wolfram's arms.

_"What do you mean?"_

_"Surely you must have heard the tales about the noble wolfman who protects the forest!"_ Wolfram scoffed.

 _"Then this is indeed the witches' village under the protection of the wolfman…is that right?"_ Sebastian mused slowly, cupping a hand to his chin. Wolfram and Sieglinde didn't answer, both looking at him warily.

 _"Herr Wolfram, these people are dangerous!"_ the lead woman cried. _"We must finish them off at o-"_

 _"Wait!"_ Sieglinde barked, turning over Wolfram's shoulder to address the woman. Then she squirmed up to whisper in her servant's ear, one hand blocking out the sight of her mouth, perhaps to avoid us reading her lips, perhaps to just amplify the sound.

Wolfram twitched a little as she finished. _"My lady, that is…"_

 _"Do you refuse to do as I bid?"_ Sieglinde said, an adorable pout crossing her face.

Wolfram's expression became mulish, before he sighed and made as if to click his heels together. _"Ja."_ he answered obediently, then turned towards us.

_"Listen well. If you head back into the forest now, darkness will fall before you make it out. The forest at night is far too perilous a place. Safe passage through the forest a second time cannot be guaranteed –no. You'll never be able to leave its confines again. So…we will make an exception and permit you all to stay the night."_

Sebastian, Finny, and I all jolted, making the others perk up as well, curious and perhaps a little confused.

 _"We can provide beds for tonight."_ Wolfram continued begrudgingly, gesturing with his free hand. _"But come the very break of dawn-"_

 _"Herr Wolfram!"_ the lead woman blurted. _"How could you invite strangers to the Emerald Castle?!"_

 _"Hilde."_ Wolfram cut her off sharply, though he seemed just as displeased as she was. _"It is as my lady wills."_

The now-named Hilde fell silent, gritting her teeth as one of her followers timidly reached out a hand. _"Frau Hilde…"_

"What's happening?" Ciel asked, having only seen Sebastian, Finny, and I come to attention and heard Sebastian chew me out for trying to enact the very natural reaction of lunging forward to glomp Sieglinde.

"I believe we are being permitted to stay at the liege's residence for the night." Sebastian told him, looking down.

Wolfram turned and pointed through the swirling mist to the odd, twisted tower I had seen earlier. _"That is my lady's Emerald Castle. Follow me."_

Apparently we weren't going to be given the time to grab our luggage, and I shrugged, following after the others as we trailed after Sieglinde and Wolfram. Sebastian wasn't grabbing me to hold me down anymore, but I still rubbed my bruised shoulder with a pout, feeling it twinge slightly with pain. Oh, I was gonna snuggle Sieglinde, and it was going to be _glorious_.

"They tell us to leave, then to stay the night." Ciel scoffed to himself as we wandered through the village. "Really, what are they playing at?"

"I cannot say." Sebastian whispered back. "But…it is clear that there is something afoot in the village."

This statement was made with the sudden reveal of a town square full of torture instruments as we turned a corner, making Bardroy and some of the others gape. There was an iron maiden, a chair covered with spikes, and oddly enough, a pumpkin-headed scarecrow, along with a dozen other torture devices I had seen in movies or pictures, but couldn't remember the names of. If it was spiky, it was probably in that display. If it was made of metal and designed for pain, it was probably in that display.

"Eep! What is this place?!" Mey-rin squawked, looking at all the carelessly displayed devices.

"You do realize that it's packed with instruments of torture –says Wilde?!" Snake gasped from the other side of our group.

"Those were quite popular in the witch trials." Sebastian noted almost reminiscently as he passed by, and Ciel snorted, looking at the pile with distaste.

"This is all fast becoming outrageously occult for my tastes-"

 _"Hallo. Du da, kleiner Gnom."_ Sieglinde interrupted him, peeping over Wolfram's shoulder. She was so tiny she could place both hands over the ridiculously broad line of his shoulders, like she was peeping over the edge of a table.

_Hey. You there, little gnome._

_"What is your name?"_ Sieglinde asked.

 _"Oh, dear! Forgive us for not introducing ourselves sooner…"_ Sebastian said, bending down towards Ciel. "She is asking for your name."

"I get the feeling she said something passing rude just now…" Ciel mumbled, before stating, louder "I'm Ciel Phantomhive."

 _"How old are you?"_ Sieglinde asked, and Sebastian smiled brightly as he straightened up, answering for Ciel.

_"The young master is thirteen years old."_

"Hrrm…" Sieglinde murmured, sinking back into Wolfram's shoulder as she continued to stare almost contemplatively at Ciel.

Ciel blinked in bewilderment.

Leading up to the castle gate was a broad, arched stone bridge that crossed a sudden gaping ravine in the ground, one that plummeted down and down into utter blackness, crossed with a few wisps of mist.

"Whoa! So high!" Bardroy cried, peering over the edge as he gripped the parapet. "I'd be dead if I fell from here!"

Wolfram briefly set Sieglinde down to unlock the ornate ironwork gates and push them open with a theatrical _creak_.

 _"We have arrived."_ he said, and the other servants oohed as we walked onto grounds. _"This is the Emerald Castle."_

Aside from the twisting, turning largest tower, there were several others, much shorter and in straight lines, and the keep itself was decorated in whimsical, geometric fashion like something you'd see in an adaption of the Queen of Hearts' palace from _Alice in Wonderland_. Fancifully groomed plants were everywhere, with topiaries in the shape of mushrooms, peaked trees, climbing vines of ivy and other bushy, flowered plants, a fountain, and other picturesque delights. Flowers and bushes lined the path as we walked up to the front door, drawing the attention of our resident gardener.

"Oooh! What a strange flower!" he gasped, leaning down to touch a small cluster of tiny pale blooms. "I've never seen one like it~!"

 _"Be careful!"_ Sieglinde called, deadpan, from over Wolfram's shoulder. _"Its poisonous. Your fingers will swell up if you touch it!"_

"Fwaah!" Finny yelped. _"R-right!"_

 _"This way."_ Wolfram told us as we entered the front hall, walking up an ornate staircase that curved around a twisted, bare tree hung with dozens of flaming lanterns.

"Thompson, with us. The rest of you lot, wait here." Sebastian said as he followed Ciel up the stairs.

"Kaaay!" Finny agreed, and I waved sheepishly to Mey-rin as I picked up my skirts and followed.

 _"You are our first guests in many a year."_ Sieglinde said as we came into a dining hall with mullioned windows and a long table set with many horned chairs. _"Let us treat you to a special feast."_

 _"We are much obliged."_ Sebastian replied.

 _"Wolfram, make the preparations."_ Sieglinde then said as he lowered her into the chair at the head of the table. _"And show the servants to their rooms."_

 _"Ja."_ he answered promptly.

Sebastian pulled out a chair two places away from Sieglinde on the right side of the table, with Ciel sitting down and allowing him to push it back in. Since I neither expected nor received similar assistance, I sat down myself, another seat down just in case the one space between diners thing was a social obligation.

There was silence for a few moments as Sieglinde demurely placed her hands in her lap and Wolfram walked out the door. Ciel kept casting glances down, towards her ridiculously tiny feet beneath the table. If I remembered correctly, he was thinking about the lotus feet practice currently common in China, that of breaking and binding young girls' feet to keep them desirably small. (If I remembered correctly, the desired shape was about four inches long.)

And I wasn't gonna remember any more than that, because the practice of foot binding was functionally _horrific_.

Anyways, Ciel was correctly thinking that it was odd to see that practice on a Caucasian girl in Germany who had no other trappings of Chinese culture about her.

 _"Du da drüben."_ Sieglinde suddenly said, looking toward Ciel, who jolted. _You there._

"Oh?" Ciel responded automatically, before jolting. "Eh?! Are you talking to me?"

 _"I am very sorry. The young master has not yet achieved fluency in German, you see."_ Sebastian said from his place standing behind Ciel's chair, and Sieglinde raised her eyebrows.

_"Is that so?"_

An awkward silence fell. I fidgeted, tapped my fingers against the polished table, looked out through the windows and up at the chandelier and trophy-hung walls. Glancing towards my watch, barely hidden beneath the sleeve of my dress, I saw that ten minutes passed by.

Then thirty.

Then an hour.

A _whole fucking hour_ , and no sounds from anything but the ticking of the clock.

"Come on…you say something." Ciel whispered urgently to Sebastian. "You're an expert at chatting with women!"

A drop of sweat slid down Sebastian's jaw. "…Be that as it may, I-"

An absolutely enormous growl interrupted his returning whisper, and we looked to the demure Sieglinde at the head of the table as her stomach rumbled like a slavering bear.

 _"That is my body's signal demanding I ingest some sustenance."_ she said nonchalantly, putting a hand to her abdomen as her stomach continued to growl.

"Not even a blush at that tremendous rumbling?" Ciel mumbled to himself.

 _"Herr Wolfram seems to be delayed."_ Sebastian said, popping out his watch and considering it. _"Perhaps something untoward has taken place?"_

 _"He is indeed later than usual."_ Sieglinde noted as her stomach growled again, slightly quieter.

Sebastian brightened, putting a hand to his chest and smiling. _"May I visit the kitchen?"_

 _"You may."_ Sieglinde answered.

"Well then, please excuse my absence." Sebastian said in English as he made his smug escape, making Ciel's face drain of color.

"Eh?! Wai-!"

The door shut.

A cloud of gloomy despair fell over Ciel, and I reached over to gingerly pat his shoulder in sympathy. I was suffering much, much less, since I could actually understand what was being said around me, albeit slowly.

 _"Sag mir. Wie heißt der schwarzhaarige Mann?"_ Sieglinde asked Ciel, who jolted.

_Tell me. What is the black-haired man's name?_

"Erm…" Ciel mumbled, relaxing a little. Apparently, he'd caught enough words to get the gist of her question.

"Sebastian. _Mein. Butler."_ he said laboriously, pointing to himself and then the door Sebastian had taken. _"Verstanden?"_

Sieglinde nodded, making Ciel clench his fist in victory.

 _"Wo sind deine Eltern?"_ she asked. _Where are your parents?_

"Hunh?" Ciel gulped. "Parents…where…er…"

His expression grew a little stiff as he realized what she was asking.

 _"Eltern…nicht…haben. Tot."_ he explained clumsily.

Sieglinde twitched, then leaned forward to rest her cheek against her hand. "Hohh…"

I jumped as Ciel's hand suddenly lashed out and grabbed onto my knee.

" _Thompson_ ," he ground out frantically. "Continue and translate this conversation for me, _now_!"

"Wha-? Ah, er, alright." I said, rapidly shuffling straighter.

 _"Dame Sullivan, wie alt sind Sie?"_ I asked Sieglinde in return, and she straightened up a little.

 _"Elf."_ she answered. _"Und du?"_

 _"Siebzehn."_ I replied, then looked towards Ciel. "She's eleven years old."

Ciel raised an eyebrow. "Unlikely she's ever left the village, then."

"Probably not. Ah, _Wäre es in Ordnung, wenn ich Sie Sieglinde nennen würde, Dame Sullivan?"_

 _"Ja, ja."_ Sieglinde waved her hand carelessly, and I grinned. _"Die meisten meiner Untertanen nennen mich Herrin Sullivan oder bezeichnen mich als meinen Titel als Smaragdhexe. Rufen Sie mich an, wie Sie möchten."_

I nodded, before smiling and gesturing to myself. _"Achso. Mein Name ist Aryana Thompson, aber ich möchte lieber als Arya angesprochen werden. Ich bin ein Angestellter des Graf Phantomhive hier."_

Ciel coughed loudly, giving me a pointed glare.

"Oh, uh, she says we can call her whatever we like, and that most of the villagers refer to her as Mistress Sullivan or as her title of Emerald Witch. I was just telling her my name and how I work for you."

"Just remember I can barely understand a blasted word of what either of you are saying." Ciel grumbled sullenly, his eye twitching.

"Hey man, you were the one who skipped out on your German studies."

The glare Ciel rendered unto me was enough to peel paint, and I grinned sheepishly.

_***Time Skip***_

_"Maultaschen and wurst soup. Eisbein made of ham hock. And for dessert, rote Grutze_." Sebastian said as he briskly laid the plates down before the three of us, much to our unified relief. I had gotten pretty good at passing conversation between Ciel and Sieglinde and not forgetting myself in getting lost in an actual conversation with her as we left Ciel behind, with Sieglinde probing curiously at our pasts and where we were from. She didn't get too far though, since once Sebastian had gotten involved the preparations for dinner had gone a lot faster and it was barely another half hour before he'd whisked out with Wolfram and a cart of various delicacies.

 _"Hohh, this is quite a marvelous feast."_ Sieglinde said, then turned to Wolfram with sparkling eyes. _"Nicely done, Wolf."_

 _"No…er, that butler assisted me."_ Wolfram said, rubbing the back of his neck as he leaned down to more comfortably speak with her.

 _"As you are allowing us to stay the night, it is only fair."_ Sebastian said primly. _"I am the butler of the Phantomhive House. It goes without saying that I can provide assistance of this level."_

I dug in, since it was food made by Sebastian and probably not poisoned. Although…well, there were some fuzzy details about the specifics of the whole façade everyone else in Wolfsschlucht was putting up around Sieglinde. They very well could've put hallucinogenic things in here…nah. Sebastian would catch it before it got anywhere near Ciel, and I would find out as a matter of course tangential to that.

Though it had to be said, I was not digging in with anywhere near as much gusto as Sieglinde, who scrambled to stuff everything in her mouth practically at once and spoke with her mouth full, exclaiming over the deliciousness of our meal as Ciel stared at her in stunned silence.

"Sh-she eats with such gusto." he finally managed, and Sebastian deadpanned.

"She must be unassuming as a matter of principle."

He then glanced towards the door, and I glanced up from my own food, as rapid footsteps approached and it was suddenly flung open by that stern-looking woman, Hilde, who seemed to run things in the village.

 _"Herr Wolfram, its terrible!"_ she cried, then bent over the edge of the table, gasping, as we all looked towards her and Wolfram hastened down to her end.

_"What is it, Hilde?"_

_"Th-the wolfman has come!"_ she blurted, making the others gasp and me choke. Hilde quickly bowed to Sieglinde at the head of the table. _"She's been hurt badly. Mistress Sullivan, please save her!"_

 _"I'll come right away. Wolf!"_ Sieglinde said with determination, hopping into his arms as he hastened back to her end of the table.

 _"Ja."_ He looked towards us with disfavor as I hastily swallowed and stood, following Ciel and Sebastian. _"You three wait here-"_

 _"No. Please allow us to join you."_ Sebastian said hand over his chest. _"We would like to learn more about the menace that lurks in the forest."_

Wolfram looked at the demon warily, but didn't object as he turned on his heel and stalked down the stairs, followed by the rest of us. We hastened to retrace our steps from earlier that day as we rushed through the darkness and into a torchlit part of the village, where all the women were gathered around someone or something on the ground. When they saw Wolfram and Sieglinde, they rushed towards them, raising clasped hands in supplication.

_"Oh! Mistress Sullivan!"_

_"Please help, Mistress Sullivan!"_

I winced as we made our way through the crowd and saw a young woman stomach-down on a reed mat on the ground, her dress torn open and hanging around her back, spattered with blood. Her bare back was covered with blood that oozed from a crosshatch of deep gouges right in the center, and Sieglinde gasped, reaching out as Wolfram set her down.

 _"Wh-what is this wound?"_ she stammered. _"Th-this is the first time such a thing has happened. Herr Wolfman has never turned his claws upon the people of our village before…"_

 _"My lady, we must stop the bleeding."_ Wolfram said, pulling out some kind of corked bottle from his jacket.

 _"This'll hurt a bit."_ Sieglinde told her patient as she uncorked it, starting to pour whatever solution that was inside over the woman's back, holding her down with a hand on her head and mumbling as the woman flinched and cried out with pain.

I frowned a little as the blood began to clear away, revealing two sets of three-clawed gouges, the higher one crossing the other. On the obviously ridiculous assumption there was a wolflike creature here, even if it was humanoid, the configuration of the claws was…wrong. It was two diagonal swipes, one going almost horizontally across the girl's back, the other scraping almost vertically upwards underneath it. That…didn't make sense.

Briefly making claws with my own arched fingers, I vaguely swiped my hand downwards, trying to feel out the same swipe as if it was on the girl's back.

Yeah, the lower, near-vertical one would make sense if a wolflike or humanoid creature was leaping at the girl from behind, doing a downswing, but the second one didn't make sense. The only conceivable way it could've been caused was if the wolfman had wrapped the woman in a bear-hug or something and clawed at her back, and if that had been the case, the first swipe would've been more slanted, since that was a pulling-sideways motion rather than a swinging-downwards slice.

The first one didn't make sense if she'd been attacked from the front, and the second one didn't make sense if she'd been attacked from the back. Also, if the wolfman was so bound and determined to attack her, how had she gotten away? Moreover, if she'd been helped by the others or something, why hadn't they fought the creature off with weapons before it could get her in the first place? They were certainly happy enough to wave their weapons at us, and I would've thought that they would be a hard thing to let go of when the women knew we were still up at the castle. Even giant werewolves answered to pitchforks, if there were enough of them.

This was fishier than a market in Maine, especially when you considered that they had laid the bleeding victim out, in the open, right in the middle of a barely-defensible square, on the ground. If a predator was after someone and had tasted blood in the metaphorical sense, whether it was a supernatural predator or otherwise, you'd want to put that person inside as sturdy a building as you could find, whether or not they could bring the woman up to the castle. And even _Victorian_ common sense told you that when someone was injured and bleeding, you didn't leave them on the bug-infested dirt, you took them somewhere safe and warm and clean –aka, _indoors_.

But if you wanted to make a show, if you wanted shouting and alarm and the whole village clustered pathetically together for protection, then hell yeah, you left your victim in a public square.

 _"He might still be nearby."_ Wolfram commanded, sweeping an arm out. _"Light all the torches!"_

"What do you think?" Ciel asked in a murmur, hand to his chin.

"That injury alone is not enough for us to go on." Sebastian whispered back, probably having deduced the same thing I did, except seven times more advanced. "Shall we try searching the forest?"

"Not now. Avoid doing anything to give them cause to distrust you." Ciel said to both of us, and we all jumped at a crackly screech.

 _"'Tis the wrath o' Herr Wolfman!"_ an old woman in a hooded robe bellowed, lurching forward with a jangle of her pendant medallion. She spread her arms, gesturing with the twisted staff she held in her other hand. _"'Tis his wrath at having strangers intrude upon his forest! Begone, ye outlanders!"_

 _"It's because she didn't have her amulet!"_ Sieglinde protested. _"If she'd had it with her, she wouldn't have been attacked!"_

 _"Has Herr Wolfman ever before harmed us by his own hand?!"_ the hag screeched back. _"Protect the outlanders, would ye!? Well, Emerald Witch?!"_

Sieglinde shrank guiltily.

 _"Lest ye forget, Emerald Witch! Our ancestors suffered countless atrocities at the hands o' folks from the outside! Ye must never trust their ilk! Ye must never forget the grudge borne by our forebearers! Ye must never forget the gratitude and awe we owe Herr Wolfman!"_ the old woman howled, hobbling towards us and waving her hands wildly.

 _"But I-!"_ Sieglinde tried, only to be cut off as the hag whirled to point ominously at Ciel.

 _"Hear ye, foolish interlopers! 'Tis ye who have unleashed the fury of Herr Wolfman! This is all your doing, swine!"_ she added, getting right in Ciel's face and pointing a jagged fingernail at him as he blinked, taken aback and probably not understanding one word in three. _"Yours! SWINEEEE! Get ye gone from here, posthaste! Lest ye wanting Herr Wolfman to rend ye limb from liiiiimb!"_

She turned away with another screech, leaving a nonplussed Ciel to stare after her, arm held protectively over his chest.

 _"…Anyhow, stay inside till dawn."_ Wolfram said after an uncomfortable moment, looking towards the villagers.

 _"Its plain to all of you now, isn't it?"_ Hilde barked as they got the woman onto a stretcher –and how suspiciously odd it was that they hadn't done it before. _"Don't carelessly venture into the forest if you value your lives. Ever!"_

As we trudged solemnly back to the castle, I was absorbed in the macabre realization that, however staged this had all been, that woman on the ground had _still_ volunteered to have her back slashed open, just to maintain this illusion. After all, she hadn't said a peep amongst all her screams in denial of the fact that it had been a very _nonexistent_ wolfman who hacked her open.

Damn, man. Just, damn. I could only hope I'd have as much grit towards whatever purpose I put myself towards in the future, though I was still huffy about all these people working to deceive Sieglinde for no good reason.

Mass production of a poison gas was the very _opposite_ of a good reason.

I was on my toes to tell everything I had seen to Ciel and Sebastian as we retired for the night, my leg bouncing rapidly as I sat on the two-step dais that lead to the window and balcony, watching as Sebastian prepared a tea service for me and Ciel, who was sitting calmly on his large bed.

"Make it strong." Ciel ordered as Sebastian poured the water into the teapot. "We may be up all night."

"Very good, sir." Sebastian said, and handed over a delicate cup and saucer after a few more moments. "Here is your tea, straight."

"You catch the configuration of that wound?" I asked as I accepted my own cup.

"Mm. I never thought anyone would actually fall victim to the wolfman…" Ciel mused as I took a sip. "I mean, its not in line with Chlaus's accou- _nguh_!"

He choked off as Sebastian shoved a teacake into his mouth.

"Mrff!" Ciel grunted, but Sebastian held a finger to his mouth, hushing him.

We both fell silent as Ciel chewed and choked down the cake, watching Sebastian quietly tap across the room to the door, which he swiftly pulled open.

Sieglinde fell in with a yelp, trailing four large helium balloons fixed to a circular device around her waist.

"You!" Ciel gasped.

 _"Well, well, Lady Sullivan."_ Sebastian said in German, bending down to lift her up. _"Have you left your valet behind and come here all by yourself?"_

 _"I-I'm at least capable of moving about the castle along with the witch's balloon!"_ Sieglinde said, flailing indignantly as Sebastian hefted her up under his arm like a parcel of groceries.

 _"Is that right?"_ he hummed, looking up at them, before pressing the door shut again with one hand. _"However, I cannot say that I approve of a lady eavesdropping at a man's door."_

Sebastian narrowed his eyes as he unhooked the balloons from the thing around her waist, shifting to hold Sieglinde in both hands. _"So what business do you have here with us?"_

I took a sip of the hot, strong tea. I mean, wasn't it pretty obvious? Lonely sheltered child, shiny new people from the outside world. It did not take a genius to figure out.

 _"I…think you have that the wrong way around."_ Sieglinde said with a huff. _"I believe it is you who have business with me."_

"What?!" Ciel blinked.

Sieglinde smirked ominously. _"I am a witch. I can see right through you three and what you're thinking."_

Sebastian hummed as he undid the circular metal thing and just left Sieglinde in her normal clothes, lifting her up a little in satisfaction before moving to set her down. _"In that case, you must already know what comes next? I have no desire to be rough with you."_

Sieglinde nodded as he set her down beside the bed. _"Since you arrived in this village, I haven't been able to shake the feeling…"_ she told us with a swallow. _"…that tonight I would break the lock to the secret chamber I have guarded for eleven years."_

I blinked, quickly taking another sip of tea to hide my expression. Already? She was going to show us all the mysterious ticks and inconsistencies or whatever she'd noticed in her village already? Or maybe this was a precursor to her showing us the ritual chamber that led down to the secret base, all unknowing there was a secret base underneath…

 _"Aah…I had come prepared, but my heart continues to race ever faster."_ Sieglinde said, shivering as she clenched her fist against her chest. _"Well, come on, then!"_

She launched herself sideways, landing flat on her back, arms outstretched and legs sticking out stiffly, on the mattress next to Ciel as he flinched away, expression thunderstruck.

 _"Never did I imagine my first time would be a foursome, but this too is a kind of experience in itself."_ Sieglinde said with a giddy huff, making me spit my tea nearly halfway across the room. _"Please do be as gentle as possible!"_

Even Sebastian looked at her agog as Ciel stared openmouthed at the small girl next to him.

 _"Mm! It appears you are perplexed by the construction of my garb, yes?"_ Sieglinde asked, noticing that none of us had moved except to flinch away. She reached for one of the lapels across her chest, unsnapping the button. _"First you must undo this button here-"_

"No, no, no! Hold on! What exactly are you trying to do?!" Ciel blurted, waving his hands at her as though physically warding off her advances.

 _"So you prefer to conquer the citadel alone, do you?"_ Sieglinde asked as she stopped undressing, smirking as her cheeks went pink. _"Your face may say otherwise, but you're a man after all!"_

"What in the world are you on about?!" Ciel squawked. "What's that smug look for!?"

"So the young master is the kind of man who prefers to undress a woman himself, hm?" Sebastian mused, hand to his chin. "Mm, I see."

"NOW WHAT ARE YOU ON ABOUT?!" Ciel spluttered, having only understood that specific statement and perhaps a few words in Sieglinde's sentences.

 _"Or perhaps you're the kind of man who likes to have his women clothed?!"_ Sieglinde gasped in scandalized delight.

"Young master, for your age you are quite…"

"I don't understand what you're saying, but I do know that you've got it utterly wrong!" Ciel howled. Sieglinde frowned a little.

_"Wait, don't tell me you're…"_

She leaned forward, and as impersonally as if he had been a doll, squeezed Ciel between the legs.

"Huh." Sieglinde said as she sat back again, flexing her hand as Ciel shook with rage. _"So you are a male after all…"_

"H-HOW DARE YOU!" Ciel roared at a volume that would shake the entire castle as he slammed his hands into Sieglinde, shoving her right off the bed.

Mind finally working again, I hastily got up, standing near Sebastian as he shook in place with one hand clamped over his mouth, watching a red-faced Ciel pant, hands still outstretched, as Sieglinde merely laid on the ground for a few moments, legs still hooked over the edge of the mattress, before she shuffled around, sitting up on the floor.

"L-Lady Sullivan, are you quite all right?" Sebastian asked in something of a stifled wheeze, apparently holding himself back from uproarious laughter only by a considerable amount of willpower.

Sieglinde pouted, then whirled around to shriek at Ciel.

_"What a boor you are to thus humiliate a young and innocent maiden! You effeminate cur!"_

"Hunnh?! Like I said, I haven't a clue what you're saying! You deviant damsel!" he shouted back.

"Now, now, you two." Sebastian said as he regained his aplomb, quickly taking a tray of snacks from the tea cart and holding it out to them. "Sharing sweet moments in bed can be delightful as well, but what do you say to sweets of the edible sort first?"

"I will literally shove you off the edge of the tower if you try to enable her weird idea of sex." I told him as I made a point of scooting Ciel and Sieglinde apart, who reached over me to take a macaroon.

 _"'Men are always overwhelmed by lusts of the flesh.' Or so it is invariably written in books."_ she explained to us, munching placidly as Sebastian set the tray on the bed and stepped back.

 _"W-well, yes, such men do exist, but…"_ he mumbled sheepishly.

 _"Only females reside in Wolfsschlucht. So this is my first time seeing a living, breathing man."_ Sieglinde said, glancing towards Ciel and Sebastian as I sat next to her on the bed, accepting a macaroon of my own as she passed it along.

_Wait…that means she's seen a dead, not-breathing man._

_Jeez._

_They really showed that to a kid when they killed their snoopers?_

_"What about Herr Wolfram?"_ Sebastian asked with a slight sweatdrop.

 _"He's more like a guard dog."_ Sieglinde burped dismissively.

 _"I…see…"_ Sebastian shook himself a little and straightened. _"On the subject of guard dogs, everyone in the village is terrified of this being you call 'Herr Wolfman.' What exactly is Herr Wolfman?"_

Sieglinde frowned a little, becoming truly solemn for the first time since the victim in the square. _"Do you know of the witch hunts?"_

 _"Yes."_ Sebastian and I answered.

 _"Long ago, witches were believed to be the cause of any number of calamities, and were tortured and executed in the name of the witch trials. The tools of torture out in the square are from those days."_ she told us, and paused as Sebastian rapidly translated that for Ciel. _"To ward of disaster, to help people with medicinal plants –those were the witch's original duties. However, as the times changed, witches came to be seen as heretics and were hunted down by humans, barely escaping with their lives. Many took refuge in this forest. It is said it was at this time that a lone witch offered her own legs in sacrifice to protect her sisters, and made a pact with the wolfman."_

Translation ensued, and she continued again.

 _"She was known as the Emerald Witch. My ancestor. And so it came to pass that the liege of this land through the generations would have our mobility restricted in this manner."_ Sieglinde explained, shuffling her tiny feet in illustration.

"Then why did the wolfman attack a villager? That's a breach of contract." Ciel asked, and this was transmitted through Sebastian.

_"The wolfman and the Emerald Witch made their pact well over hundreds of years ago. The first Emerald Witch is now long dead. So all of this must be the result of her blood running thin in our veins."_

"In short… _the village of Wolfsschlucht is no longer the ward of the wolfman, it is his captive –is that right?"_ Sebastian asked her.

Sieglinde nodded sadly. _"That may well be. As such, I've never once set foot outside of the village since birth. I'm certain I'll live out my days here without ever doing so."_ She looked towards Ciel. _"You return to the world outside on the morrow, yes? So then…"_

She took a deep breath and straightened, looking directly into Ciel's eyes.

_"Let me hear all about the world I'll never come to know…the world that exists beyond the forest!"_

"Her earlier actions were inspired by her wholehearted desire to get to know us." Sebastian encouraged as Ciel simply scowled at her, an irk mark twitching on his forehead. When no response was forthcoming, Sebastian sighed and leaned down to whisper in his ear as Sieglinde watched the two of with wide, sparkling eyes. "For all intents and purposes, this girl is the village's absolute monarch. Would it not therefore be advisable to befriend her to further our investigations?"

"Argh, enough!" Ciel groaned. "Fine!"

He held out his hand and assumed a solemn expression. _"Es tut mir Leid… für jetzt. Lass uns…Freunde sein."_ he told her carefully, and Sieglinde perked up, though she seemed confused about the hand.

Sebastian smirked and grabbed her hand, gently pulling it forward so she could clasp hands with Ciel. _"In the young master's country, two individuals who wish to become acquainted with each other grasp each other's hand. Like so."_

Sieglinde beamed, then blinked and reached inside her pocket, pulling out three medallions. _"Oh, that's right. I shall give you these."_

Ciel turned his over curiously as she slowed her rate of speech a little, apparently finally understanding he was barely fluent in German at all.

_"They're amulets to keep the wolfman at bay. Wear them on your way back. They're very special, you understand!"_

_"Thank you."_ Ciel replied.

"The magic sign on them is the seventh pentacle of the sun from the Key of Solomon." I told him, in case Sebastian hadn't already, admiring mine in turn. "The Hebrew on them invokes the four elements and angelic and kingly rulers thereof, and the psalm around the edge reads _'Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder. I will offer unto thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord.'_ It's a pentacle to set people free and remove bonds."

Sieglinde blinked at us and tilted her head, and I grinned and raised my medallion.

 _"I know this symbol from my lore books!"_ I told her, and her eyes widened.

 _"You are also a witch?!"_ she gasped in excitement.

 _"Eh, not quite."_ I said, mindful of breaking our nonexistent cover. After all, if she or any other the others actually _had_ been witches, admitting I was one of them would lose us a major advantage.

"Mm." she nodded solemnly, then turned to Sebastian. _"N-now then, let's have you get right down to it and tell me more about those "sweet moments in bed" you mentioned before!"_

 _"Ah. I suppose I did say something to that effect."_ He mused, then looked down to Ciel and asked in English "What shall I do, young master?"

"Must you even ask?" Ciel growled. "She's just a child! Get some toys or something and play with her."

Sebastian leaned towards Sieglinde as he gestured towards Ciel with one hand. _"It would seem that the young master wishes to play with toys in bed."_

"Huh?!" she gasped, flinching away and raising a hand to her mouth. _"What a terribly keen appetite from the outset…I wonder if my body can handle it…"_

"What kind of a reaction is that?! I bet you've gone and misunderstood something again, haven't you!?" Ciel squawked, and I yelped as he grabbed me and shoved me bodily in Sieglinde's direction. "You! You're crass and female and you wanted to deal with her before, surely the two of you can come to an understanding!"

"Oof!" I grunted as his shove faceplanted me into the mattress near Sieglinde.

_"It appears the young master would like his associate to deal with you in his stead, as she is of similar appetites and has expressed a desire for physical closeness with you before…"_

_"Oh my~! A Sapphic relationship, how very scandalous!"_

"Fuck you, Sebastian." I grunted against the mattress, then raised my head up. _"Sieglinde, no woman should experience intimacy with another person until she is eighteen years of age. I would guess that the books you read were all intended for an older audience, and they seem to have given you some misinformed ideas about the level of physical contact someone your age should experience."_

 _"And that is?!"_ Sieglinde asked, scooting forward eagerly to hover over me.

 _"Hugs."_ I said firmly as I sat back up again. _"Hugs that do not leave the person's hands in contact with your more intimate regions, such as your chest, rear, or legs. Kisses to the top of your skull or forehead may be acceptable, maybe, but only from close relatives or visiting dignitaries, who may kiss you once on each cheek at first public greeting as a matter of formality. Handshakes are a more common method of greeting, and men sometimes quickly kiss the hand of women they greet to be polite. I suppose Wolfram and some of your other servants help you to don and remove your clothing sometimes?"_

_"Sometimes."_

_"They're okay doing that, but only if its to help you with your clothing and nothing else."_

I made an X across with my chest with both arms.

_"Any other touching is bad touching!"_

_"Bad touching!"_ Sieglinde agreed, mimicking me.

_"Any kind of touching that makes you uncomfortable is bad touching too. And if anyone tries to do any kind of bad touching with you, you tell them to stop, and if they don't stop, kick them in the groin and scream 'I've been molested!' at the top of your lungs!"_

_"I scream 'I've been molested!' at the top of my lungs!"_ Sieglinde repeated proudly.

_"Or call Wolfram, if he's not already there."_

_"Or do that!"_

_"And then you have **him** kick them in the groin too!"_

_"I have him kick them too!"_

_"Have him break their bones!"_

_"Break their bones!"_ she chirped happily, eyes shining.

" _What_ was that?!" Ciel spluttered, apparently having caught enough of the last sentence to be alarmed.

"Shush." I told him absently. "I'm teaching her the proper way to respond to sexual advances at her age. _Have Wolfram rip them apart piece by piece and then feed the bloody pieces to the wolfman! Anyone who actually tries to do anything intimate with you at this age is a pervert of unbelievable wickedness!"_

 _"A horrible creature!"_ Sieglinde agreed, apparently happy with the makeshift reversal of her psychology that I had just enacted.

 _"Ciel here was just thinking that, since he owns a company that makes toys for children, he should teach you some of he games people from the outside world play."_ I told her, pointing to him with my thumb as Ciel stiffened in alarm. _"He knows all about them."_

 _"Do you really?!"_ Sieglinde gasped, lunging past me to clasp both his hands in hers. _"Teach me, teach me, teach me!"_

"What did you tell her?!" Ciel cried in alarm, trying to tug his hands out of her own.

"That you own a toy company and you'd be _happy_ to show and tell her all about the many, many games people from the outside world play." I said with a devious smile. "She's absolutely begging you to learn about them."

"Thompson," Ciel said as his eye twitched rapidly. "You are _despicable_."

"Hey, you throw me to the metaphorical wolf, I throw you back." I said, reaching for another cookie and munching on it delightedly as he sighed and decoyed Sieglinde into a game of tic-tac-toe. "I'm gonna go finish my tea."

This I did, slurping down several cups of the fortifying beverage as Ciel was dragged into a long, exhaustive explanation of just about everything he could possibly manage to explain, bringing out paper and pencils and drawing with Sieglinde as he explained various things about the outside world, like trains and cars. He even managed to explain a few card games to her with his limited German, which they played. I'd even gotten to snuggle Sieglinde in my lap –with her permission, of course– as we played, and whisper helpful tips to beat Ciel in her ear. He still beat the tar out of us, of course, but at least we put up something of a fight.

Unfortunately for Ciel, each new revelation seemed to further invigorate Sieglinde, so that it was hours before she finally slumped across the bed, asleep, her double-horned hennin headdress undone to let her long raven hair spill carelessly out across the bed.

"Sh-she's finally asleep…!" Ciel gasped in exhaustion, collapsing limply across the other side of the bed as Sieglinde snored.

"Admirably done, young master." Sebastian told him with a smirk.

"Even though I just had the words, I managed to keep up the conversation. Her speech was easier to follow than the fellow from whom we brought the carriage."

"It would be." Sebastian said woodenly, making Ciel blink at him.

There was a knock at the door, which opened to reveal Wolfram.

 _"Looks like my lady has paid you a visit."_ he said, noting her on the bed, and Sebastian gestured towards it.

 _"She has only just fallen asleep."_

Wolfram stepped rapidly forward and picked her up with surprising gentleness, holding Sieglinde's small body bridal-style in his arms as he turned back towards the door. He paused there in the doorway for a moment, looking back with a scowl.

 _"Whatever my lady may have told you, put it out of your mind. You leave at daybreak."_ he said tersely, and left.

We all looked at each other, and then I looked back towards the door.

"We aren't just gonna go to bed, are we?"

"No." Ciel said.

"We're gonna go in the forest."

"Yes."

"This is not a royal 'we.'"

"No."

"This is, in fact, a we that includes me."

"Yes."

"Are you possibly _afraid_ of the Big, Bad, Wolf?" Sebastian asked angelically, smiling at me with a raised eyebrow, and I snorted.

"On the extremely unlikely chance that there actually _is_ something out there, I've got magic, and I've got bullets, and technically speaking Ciel and I have you." I said acidly, then looked towards the door with a frown. "It's the what they've got instead of a supposedly supernatural wolfman that worries me, and why they're so devoted to faking like they do have one."

"Curious indeed." Sebastian hummed. "But our answers lie in the forest."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: May 15th, 2020, 9.44 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: May 15th, 2020, 9.02 PM USA Central Time


	60. That Butler, Cabochon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want off the wild ride into post-apocalypse dystopia that is 2020. Like, we in United States are dropping like flies because human lives are obviously FAR LESS IMPORTANT THAN THE ECONOMY, and our health care system is something so shitty you couldn't find its equal even in the ninth circle of hell, but now the cops in my city have decided to publicly demonstrate the fact they think things like human decency and not being a racist piece of shit are for morons and losers, and the consequences thereof have made worldwide news.
> 
> I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota is what I'm saying, and let me tell you that even if I'm not directly affected by the rioting and looting thus far, the world seems like it's gone to shit and that's majorly depressing. My support for all the people peacefully protesting, though! Black Lives Matter!

_Arya's POV:_

Heading into the near-absolute certainty of a gas attack without a mask or any other kind of protection was not exactly the most reasonable of my many actions. In fact, it was very far down on the List of Rational Things to Do, Ever, but fuck if I wasn't able to think of a plausible excuse not to come with Ciel and Sebastian that didn't reveal my meta knowledge here. And, regrettably, I couldn't talk about it even to spare Ciel the ensuing trauma, because without said trauma and injuries we'd be kicked out of the village in less than six hours, and probably ambushed and shot en route to Nuremberg, if I pegged the personnel here right. Or ambushed and then gassed. Or ambushed, gassed, and shot when that didn't-

Okay, maybe I needed to stop thinking about that.

We _were_ heading into a very spooky forest, consisting of numerous bare-branched trees that straggled and twisted unnaturally above our heads, and an eerie, thick pea-soup fog that wreathed the ground in dim mist, making footing annoying at best and treacherous at worst. Ciel was dressed in a hooded cloak with fur around the edges and the hood pulled up, perhaps to soften his outline and make him more mistakable for a female, and Sebastian –perhaps ironically, since he was the only one of us who _didn't_ need light– was the one holding our rounded lantern as he led the way.

"This is some fog." Sebastian murmured, absently holding a hand back to steady Ciel. "Watch your step, sir."

His dark eyes roamed the forest suspiciously, and I had to say, even without meta knowledge, this forest was –weird.

It was June, and Germany had a temperate climate. The stereotypical four seasons cycled around pretty evenly here, especially since this was _southern_ Germany, near France and Switzerland. Looking up through the diffused bubble of our lantern-light, there was absolutely no reason for the branches on the trees to be bare, and yet, here they were. The rest of the forest had been lush and verdantly growing, after all, so why was everything around here dead?

"Hey, Sebastian, hang on a sec." I said, and the demonic butler paused for a moment, looking over his shoulder with a raised brow. I stepped around Ciel and knelt on the ground next to Sebastian's shoes, peering at the ground. Realizing what I was about, Sebastian obligingly lowered his lantern as light pierced briefly through the mist gathered in swaths everywhere.

"What is it?" Ciel asked warily.

"The plants." I mumbled, swishing my hand back and forth over the crumbly leaves on the ground. "The plants are wrong."

"What?"

I stood up again, scratching the back of my head with my non-dirty hand. "Uh, I lived on a farm before I got involved in all this…mess." I said as diplomatically as I could, especially since I had been the one to get myself into this "mess" to begin with. "It was derelict, or at least, we didn't use it to _farm_ anymore, but the place was still pretty rural. I know plants, I know growing stuff, at least in general. This is…off. The whole damn forest is off."

"It's dead." Sebastian hummed, clearing Ciel's puzzled expression. "Everything is dead."

"Yeah, which is weird as hell." I added, looking up at the trees with a frown. "If it was the water table, everything would be brittle and dead, not to mention it'd be the whole forest that was fucked up, or at least, bigger swaths of it. Plants are still growing here, or at least, they're _trying_ to grow. Some of the trees have leaves struggling to come out on 'em. And that's another thing…if it was the soil, then the trees wouldn't have gotten this big to begin with. Whatever happened to kill the plants off, it definitely hasn't been going on for however many centuries the wolfman was _supposed_ to be here. And it wasn't magic either, because then Sebastian and I would've been able to sense the leftover energies."

"It's not just the plants." Sebastian said, swinging his lantern around slowly. "Listen."

We listened, and the hair on my neck started to prickle.

This was a forest, which meant it was, in theory, a thriving ecosystem of numerous plants and animals. The plants were gone, ish, but that wouldn't have stopped the animals: creatures like birds and mice would actually have an easier time of getting at seeds, and foxes and other creatures would come wherever there was prey. And even if there weren't any vertebrates around, there'd _always_ be bugs. Gnats, mosquitos, maybe even dragonflies if there was a pond or something nearby, crickets, grasshoppers, possibly even cicadas. And if there _was_ a pond or something nearby, there'd be frogs.

It was nighttime, which meant that whatever frogs, crickets, or grasshoppers were here should've been croaking and chirping up a storm, filling the night with the somewhat annoying background buzz of life.

But not here, nope.

There was nothing.

Zip.

Zero.

Nada.

Goose egg.

The entire forest was as silent as the grave, while thick, misty clouds rolled in and out of the trees.

"It is far too quiet for there to be anything living here." Sebastian murmured suspiciously, eyes darting around, and I gulped. The mist was really, really starting to get thick…and I had a sinking suspicion it wasn't mist at all.

"Mustard gas." I muttered, and winced as both Ciel and Sebastian looked at me.

"What?" Sebastian asked.

"Oh, um…" I swallowed. "It was a chemical agent used in WW1. But it, uh, it got banned at Geneva or something because of how horrific it was. Like, how badly it fucked up the soldiers that survived it and stuff."

"There's more than one world war?" Ciel deadpanned after a moment of silence, and I winced again.

"Give it twenty years, if you even manage to live that long without your soul getting devoured."

I eyed Sebastian, who contrived to look perfectly innocent.

"I think WW1 ended in 1917 or something." I finally continued, looking back to Ciel. "WW2 ended in, uh, 1942 or 1945, I can't remember. 1940-something. Anyways, mustard gas. Fatal or horrifically damaging if inhaled. It'd explain the mist and the poisoned plants and stuff."

I blinked as Sebastian's face shaded with alarm, eyes snapping up to scan _the very thick mist all around us_ , and then I cringed as I realized my own Freudian slip.

I really, really hadn't meant to mention the mist, but hey…I was, quite possibly, in the middle of a gas attack. I was reasonably nervous.

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

"Iiiii think Ciel and I need to get out of here." I said tightly, giving a nervous smile.

Sebastian's eyes darted rapidly between the two of us, before he wordlessly moved with extreme swiftness to scoop up Ciel.

Ciel gasped, however, pointing, and we both looked over Sebastian's shoulder to see an ominous, bulky shape looming through the mist.

"The wolfman!?" Ciel cried, and the hulking wolf-like figure gave a guttural snarl.

"I've got him, you go." I said quickly, slinging my own hands around Ciel's petite waist. Sebastian darted a look at me, but let go, unclasping his own arms to turn and shoot off in pursuit.

I, meanwhile, shifted to hold Ciel bridal-style rather than like a doll, and bolted in the opposite direction, back towards the Emerald Castle.

_Fuck, fuck, Jesus fuck._

Unlike –well, very like at this point– Sebastian, I knew Ciel and I had probably gotten a pretty hefty dose of gas just now, and the fact we were ostensibly running through more –since this much mist was very unnatural on so dry a night– did not exactly inspire confidence in me, especially since I was heaving in deep breaths as I ran and I remembered that, well, this stuff didn't exactly mix well with the human respiratory system.

The fact my eyes were starting to itch and burn like I'd spent too long staring at a screen, and tears were freely streaming down Ciel's face, didn't help.

_FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK-_

Sure, I had magic, but, well, my magical medical help was limited to precalculated restoration and shoving raw magic energy into something with the intent to fix it. So, in medical terms, I had a machete and a mallet. Sure, you could do surgeries, but they wouldn't be precise or even all that successful unless you did a lot of research and prep beforehand.

Which I had not, like a _fucking_ idiot, because that was something I _totally_ could have done on the painfully long train rides here! Heck, I could've whipped up some kind of magic gas-mask and we could've waltzed around this stupid forest all night long and shot that wolfman-but-actually-guy-in-a-mask-but-I-wasn't-allowed-to-know-that-yet right in his stupid fucking face. Bloody hell, I could've wrangled it so that we did that and then found out about the gas and then Sebastian, competent bastard that he was, could've destroyed the secret research facility in the night, we could've gotten all the evidence we needed and also maybe wipe out all the lying bastards that were deceiving her, and Sieglinde could wake up and come right along with us with Wolfram in the morning before we were supposed to be kicked out.

Hindsight. 20-20.

Since my foresight had been decidedly _not_ 20-20, here I was sprinting through a forest littered with clouds of mustard gas and trying not to inhale too much of it as my ankles twisted and turned on smooth, fallen branches, Ciel an alarmingly wheezy deadweight on my shoulder. But hey, there was the castle, and there was the balcony to his room, and after a quick half-glance around to look for witnesses, there were my magical walls, and I scampered up the makeshift staircase like a monkey before leaping down onto the balcony and kicking the doors open.

I didn't really understand how we weren't immediately dead, but my stomach lurched as I recognized the symptoms rising in Ciel and me anyways. If you'd ever eaten a pepper, you'd recognize the sensation: except it was _all over_ , all over my skin, stinging at my eyes, aching in my lungs, churning painfully in my stomach. The prickling feeling grew worse with every second, every breath, until it was a harsh, shuddering burn, and my insides twisted and cramped painfully as I half-slid half-fell into a crouch, getting Ciel onto the ground. He writhed much like I felt like doing, grabbing for his eyepatch and ripping it off one-handed, revealing the contract branded onto his eye as it continued to water.

"Oh no." Ciel croaked, looking at himself in horror, and I winced as I saw the chemical burns on his shaking hands through my own blurry vision. Even as I watched, Ciel's breathing grew more labored, and I saw blood stream down his face from his nose.

 _Oh no._ My soul echoed mutely. Sure, Ciel had been affected in the manga, but that was different than seeing (and experiencing) it myself, especially when you considered the absolutely cataclysmically _horrific_ vengeance Sebastian would enact upon me if Ciel died under my watch, or even just in my general proximity.

"Hey!" I croaked, lurching forward and placing a hand on the back of his neck. Swallowing past the nauseous lump in my throat, I conjured my magic, both hands starting to glow a warm yellow as the energy began to sink into Ciel's body. His breathing stopped escalating, but that was all: no matter how much I poured into him, panic rising in my chest, I was only stopping the symptoms from progressing, not reversing them. "C'mon Ciel, it's gonna be okay, I gotcha, I-"

My mindless soothing was interrupted by a hacking, breathless, scouring series of coughs, and I panicked and spat afterwards as blood dripped wet and hot from my own nose, running into my mouth and making my entire system revolt as I held myself back from vomiting by an inch, relying on my hand on Ciel's neck to prop me up almost as much as he was frantically clutching the other to his face, letting the healing energy sink into his burning cheek. Except I was on half output, since some of that healing was going into _me_ , since I couldn't exactly help anyone if I was dying on the ground.

The balcony door slammed against the stone wall as Sebastian ran into the room, and I swallowed rapidly again, looking up past the nausea and the dizziness and the burning pain.

"I can't fix both of us at once." I gasped. "We need help!"

Sebastian had carried Ciel in the manga, and I briefly expected him to do the same thing now, since Ciel was obviously of far higher priority to him than me, and I resigned myself to charging futilely after the speeding demon as he bolted along the castle corridors.

What I did _not_ expect was Sebastian scooping up me and Ciel in one, Ciel on top of me and awkwardly clutching at my body with burning hands, as I hastily shifted to plant my glowing hands on his back and skull –and _then_ Sebastian bolted from the room.

In retrospect, it made sense. I was healing Ciel, or at least preventing him from taking more damage, and that required physical contact, ergo Sebastian killed two birds with one stone and hauled me along with them as a sort of living battery pack to Ciel's metaphorical pacemaker.

I was too busy focusing on not dying or throwing up to appreciate the smoothness and speed at which Sebastian ran, curling around Ciel as he curled into me, instinctively trying to conserve our energy source by pressing together into a smaller unit. It worked with heat, why not magic? Two targets closer together were easier to affect than one, and even if Ciel's eyes were starting to glaze, I knew he had enough coherency to realize I was the source of the not-progressing of all the hurt that was affecting him. I, of course, didn't want either of us to die or be permanently injured, and yelped as Sebastian suddenly shifted his grip, throwing Ciel against his shoulder and me draped over him by proxy as the demon started banging on an ornate door.

 _"Lady Sullivan! Your help if you please, Lady Sullivan!"_ he shouted urgently in German.

There was a groan from inside the chamber, and scuffling, limping footsteps before something grabbed the door and seemed to drag itself upright by the handle. Sieglinde opened it, swaying a little awkwardly on her tiny bound feet and clearly still half-asleep.

_"What is it? Have you come to sneak into my bed…?"_

She opened her eyes more completely, and blanched as she saw the yellowish blisters all over the three of us, and me and Ciel's ragged breathing.

_"You-! You three have been in the forest, haven't you?"_

_No shit, Sherlock._ I managed to think groggily.

 _"I am at a loss as to how to express my deepest apologies."_ Sebastian said quickly, adjusting his grip to hold me and Ciel more naturally. _"I will accept any punishment you see fit, so please save the young master!"_

 _"My lady!"_ Wolfram cried, slamming open the next door down the hall. _"What's going on?!"_

He did the same double-take Sieglinde had as he took us in.

_"You bastards-"_

_"Wolf, we must perform the rite of purification!"_ Sieglinde cried imperiously, throwing out her arm. _"Prepare the cauldron chamber!"_

Wolfram scooped her up, and the two led us down to the bowels of the castle, not even bothering to get dressed. The room we burst into was awesome, and if I'd have been healthier I'd have loved to study it: bookshelves were built everywhere into the round stone chamber, arched and ornate and gorgeous, stretching up two stories and more, and there was a monster-truck-sized cauldron in the very center of the room, with two arched flights of stairs leading up to it at waist level.

 _"Hurry! We haven't much time!"_ Sieglinde shouted as we dashed into the room, pointing to a giant metal door beneath the giant cauldron. _"Take off your clothes and throw them into the oven!"_

I groggily pulled my head up from Sebastian's shoulder. "I am _not_ stripping in front of-"

The rest of my sentence was lost in a yelp as Sebastian unceremoniously dumped me and stepped over my body to lay Ciel down much more carefully, starting to rip his clothes off.

"Please do enjoy those burns at your leisure, then." Sebastian said without skipping a beat as the jacket was ripped open and he tore apart Ciel's undershirt with a single brisk tug, buttons flying everywhere.

"Oh fuck you." I wheezed, before squirming with discomfort as I groggily managed to sit up, directing my magic inwards and towards myself only as my hands moved grudgingly to my affects. Trying not to pay attention to anyone else in the room and moving at speed, like I was ripping off a bandage, I pulled off the holster for my Colt and then stripped off my dress, leaving me only in my undergarments with a knife strapped to my thigh. I stood up shakily to undo the strap, letting my knife drop, then took a deep breath and got everything off as well, leaving my weapons and their sheaths on the ground and bundling up my clothes to toss them in the oven.

I very deliberately averted my eyes as Sebastian threw off his own clothes less than five feet away, no matter how much I was tempted…and it wasn't just because he still scared me, or because I had more important things to worry about now. If Sebastian caught me peeking, I knew I would _never_ hear the end of it. Familiarity bred contempt, and contempt in this case meant relentless mocking from a very smug demon.

Bastard.

 _"Now into the cauldron with you, quickly!"_ Sieglinde cried, and Sebastian grabbed Ciel and ran up the steps, splashing into the water. _"When did you go into the forest?!"_

_"About fifteen minutes ago."_

_"Curses, then we're nearly out of time."_

She called. _"Wolf, boil some water! Bring me some more cleansing herbs!"_

_"Ja!"_

As he ran to fetch the required herbs from a shelf, I decided to throw a gamble at this point –from Ciel and Sebastian's perspective at least– because I was _not_ getting naked in close confines with either of them.

My feminine modesty had limits even for medical purposes, damnit.

 _"I can use magic as well!"_ I coughed over to Sieglinde as she worked hastily at her table, and she blinked, obviously taken aback. _"Now that you've got them, I can heal myself!"_

 _"V-very well! Do let me know if you need any help!"_ she said, before scraping some kind of mixture into a jar and letting Wolfram carry her up to the top of the cauldron.

 _"Submerge yourselves in the water while I chant the spell! Stay in there until I tell you to come out!"_ she told Sebastian.

 _"All right!"_ he agreed, before plunging under.

I went under too, although in a different sense. Since my control of spontaneous healing magic was shaky, to say the least, I needed to focus nearly to the point of meditation to channel what I needed to keep –whatever was happening to me– from happening. It definitely helped a lot that I _knew_ what was wrong: I'd been contaminated by a foreign substance, something corrosive or an irritant, and I had inhaled it and it was apparently also deadly by contact, hence the stripping of clothes and the cleansing in a bath. From a magical perspective, that gave me a direction to go in and some things to accomplish, such as cleansing myself through more supernatural means and thinning out the poisonous influence in my blood and lungs until it was nonexistent, then pouring more magic in with the intent to restore the scarred and damaged areas. In theory, simple, if all you were dealing with was a block of stone or something.

In practice, much more complex, when you considered all the many and varied intricacies of the human body, from veins to tissue to the web of nerves and cells all throughout the body.

Who designed the human body. I was going to file a complaint.

Er, anyways, by gradual degrees, as I fed more and more magic into myself, my body stopped hurting and my skin stopped stinging, and slowly, I felt the nausea uncoil in my stomach and fade. My muscles, which had been stiff and tense with pain and discomfort, slowly relaxed, and I was able to take slower, deeper breaths as my lungs stopped burning and it stopped hurting to breathe through my nose –which was no longer bleeding. When I opened my eyes, it didn't feel like I was peeling onions right onto them anymore, and as I blinked gingerly, getting to my feet, no more tears ran down my face.

Stumbling sideways a little to fetch up against the stair railing, feeling the heat radiating from the enormous oven only five or so feet away to my right not-quite-sizzle on my bare skin, I gathered myself, before turning and peering into my dim reflection on the polished metal rail, and gave a wince at what I saw there, tracing a hand over the scars that were all that remained of the yellowish boils that had been over my skin. Well, that was easily-ish fixed.

Yellow light sparkling and trailing behind my fingers, I swept my hand down over my face, continuing further down my body and ending at my hip as the magic swept onwards past my gesture, clearing my skin of blemishes and lingering damage as I exhaled in relief, seeing them disappear in my reflection.

_And that's that done._

Envisioning one of the few runes I had memorized and adding a special twist to it, I snapped my fingers and a sheet fluttered down over my head, summoned from some random bedchamber in the castle. It would do until I found actual clothes, and I pulled it down and wrapped the white fabric around myself like a clumsy sari before stepping away from the now-roaring oven and glancing up the stairs. A worried-looking Sieglinde was leaning over the edge, watching Sebastian as he peered at his food, er, his contractor with concern. Ciel was coughing and retching in the demon's arms, but like me, his breathing was a lot easier, and the blisters on his face looked cleaner, faded.

And that was _that_ done. I sighed in relief, drawing Sieglinde's attention, and her eyebrows flew upwards as she saw my very-much unblemished state and the sheet that had definitely not been in the room before wrapped around me.

 _"Can you do the same thing for Ciel and Sebastian?"_ she called, and I hurried up the stairs as Sebastian tracked me with his eyes, wary and alert. But he did swim a little closer to the edge and push Ciel closer as I reached out for him, and my hand began to glow again as I touched his bare back. Sieglinde gasped softly, and I winced as her fingernails suddenly dug into my arm, her whole body vibrating with excitement.

Ah, of course. Despite her claims to be a witch, she'd never witnessed any _actual_ magic, and certainly nothing as tangible as what I was doing. The poor girl was probably over the moon about it.

Refocusing back on Ciel from my brief distraction, I let the magic sink into him, before frowning a little. It was…going into him, but then it was stopping before it could do anything. No, that wasn't quite right: it was like it was being drained, or deflected, but not back at anything. Being pulled…?

My eyes moved to Sebastian, who was holding Ciel and looking at me with impatient concern.

 _"I, ah, I can't."_ I said, and watched his eyes narrow. My eyes flicked over to Sieglinde, before I continued hastily in English, lowering my voice. "It's the contract. I can't really heal things specifically, I can just direct magic into someone to try and "fix" them, but being tied to a demon is a pretty big thing to fix, and too much of what I send into him is getting sucked into that to try and "heal" it. And since the contract can't be fixed or altered by just general magic being directed at it…"

"You cannot heal the young master." Sebastian finished, his glare fading a little. He sighed, then looked at Sieglinde. _"Your companion's magic is sadly not suited for this particular task. Might we ask for your continued attendance?"_

_"Of course."_ Sieglinde promised, beaming, as she released my arm. I made a mental note to check for crescent welts later. _"Your conditions have stabilized for now, so you can get out and get dressed."_

I automatically reached out to cover Sieglinde's eyes and squeezed my own shut as Sebastian heaved himself out of the cauldron with a _splash_ , carrying Ciel with him.

There were footsteps on the stairway behind me, and I gratefully turned and cracked an eye to see Wolfram approaching, still in his nightshirt and trousers, carrying a bundle of black and white fabric. _"My lady, here are some clothes…for…"_

Wolfram trailed off as he stopped, mid-step, halfway up the stairs, eyes darting between me and presumably Sebastian and Ciel behind me. You could almost _hear_ the dots connecting in his head.

Sebastian and Ciel, soaking wet.

Me, bone dry.

Sebastian and Ciel, still marked with the scars from the gas attack.

Me, looking like I'd never been through one.

Sebastian and Ciel, obviously having undergone Sieglinde's cure for a gas attack.

Me, obviously having _not_ undergone her treatment, but still fine.

"Geweh?" Wolfram blurted eloquently, question marks blurring the air thick around him.

 _"Isn't it wonderful?"_ Sieglinde chirped happily, wrapping her arms around my stomach and shaking me as best she could. _"Arya is a witch too! Now she can help me discover the ultimate magic even faster!"_

 _"But that's not-"_ Wolfram began, before immediately shutting his mouth.

 _That's not possible, because you aren't really a witch, and there's actually no such thing as magic._ I finished silently.

 _"I'm not a witch so much as a magician."_ I said as diplomatically as I could, tugging at her arms. _"And I'm also something of a novice."_

 _"…right."_ Wolfram said slowly, eyeing me like I was an explosive as he slowly, cautiously walked around me to hand off the clothing to Ciel and Sebastian. I could've smacked myself for my precipitation (in the sense of hastiness): sure, no magicians were around to go toe to toe with me, but Wolfram knew this had been a gas attack and not magic, and yet here I was, perfectly unharmed, by methods he did not understand nor believe in. That was a glaring red flag if ever there was, and we were still in the middle of our investigation. _"Do try to avoid practicing around my lady, as she has a very complex spell to perform."_

 _"Sure thing."_ I said, looking as innocently unmagical as I could and probably failing miserably. Clothing rustling behind me alerted me to the fact that Sebastian and Ciel were slowly becoming decent, and Sieglinde looked at me imperiously and made grabby motions with both hands. "Oh, uh, _right."_

I carefully lifted her up as Sieglinde latched her arms around my neck, balancing a little awkwardly, since after all I had never picked up a small child before, and if I dropped her she was _actually_ going to fall, since even standing was something of a difficulty for Sieglinde with her bound feet.

 _"Wolfram, please fetch bandages for the other two."_ she said as I solidified my grip, and the larger man sketched a bow before going back down the stairs again.

 _"You will have to tell me everything about the kind of magic you use."_ Sieglinde told me as I boosted her on my hip, still not quite willing to turn around. _"Do you have a familiar? Do you gain your power through a demonic pact? Are you an enchanter? Do you use a wand?"_

"Er…" I sweatdropped under the rapid deluge of questions. "Ah, _well…I don't precisely…"_

"Are you seriously considering teaching her?" Sebastian drawled behind me.

"Eh…" I squirmed my shoulders a little, not looking away from Sieglinde's bright, hopefully sparkling green eyes. "I mean…uh, are you decent?"

"Decent enough."

Cautiously, I looked over my shoulder, and turned fully around as I saw that Sebastian was possessed of pants and Ciel was in a medical smock.

"I mean, if you think about it, she knows about magic, and if _I_ don't teach her, who will?" I asked reasonably enough as Sieglinde continued to chatter excitedly at me in German. Sebastian raised a single eyebrow as he slid his arms into a white shirt, one after the other.

"Another magician? There are a number of them."

My own eyebrows inched up. "Another magician like the ones here? The ones that steal power from anything that twitches? _Those_ magicians?"

"Ah." Sebastian said after a pause. "Perhaps not, then."

"That's what I thought."

_"-how long have you been practicing? Who was your teacher? Is magic in your blood, or did you pick it up?"_

"Ah, _Sieglinde, we can discuss this tomorrow."_ I said, and she pouted as Wolfram came up with the required medical supplies. My eyes followed him as he went towards the other two, and I sighed in mute regret as I watched Sebastian tug on the lapels of his white shirt while watching Wolfram approach, settling it a little more firmly on his shoulders.

_Why must something so evil be so bishie?_

I yelped as Sieglinde then tugged on my hair.

 _"Take me to them."_ she ordered. _"I need to arrange their bandages."_

 _"Uh, yeah, sure."_ I said, tilting my head to slide my bangs out of her grip before stepping over to Sebastian and Ciel and setting her down near Ciel.

Sieglinde grabbed the roll of cotton bandages and unworked it deftly, before pointing and nodding as Wolfram and Sebastian manipulated the comatose Ciel, starting to wind the bandages –which seemed to be impregnated with some kind of salve, from the smell of them– around his arms. Say what you will about her naivete, or her spoiled manner: Sieglinde was a professional in every sense of the term when it came to medicine and healing. Her work was brisk, efficient, and clearly practiced, which left me pondering the reasons for that practice and ease with no small amount of discomfort. Had something gone wrong in the secret lab below us and they figured their false Emerald Witch should have the knowledge for treatment, or had the so-called "villagers" who "depended" on Sieglinde been deliberately exposed to gas in _supposed_ accidents, in order to deepen the illusion and further her understanding of how the gas worked?

Regardless, Sieglinde clearly knew exactly what to do and what symptoms to expect from someone who had been exposed to the gas, and from her unflinching manner as she tended to Ciel and Sebastian, she hadn't learned it from a book.

I shuddered. _Creepy. This place is even more cult-like than I remembered from the manga._

Anyways, within the space of ten or so more minutes, Sieglinde had Ciel's injuries dressed and Sebastian's much-fainter scars additionally covered in bandages and padding, and she was summarily scooped up in Wolfram's arms, rubbing her eyes and yawning cutely.

 _"Put him…to bed."_ she said, covering her yawning mouth as Sebastian bowed his head in silent assent, picking up Ciel and cradling him securely in both arms. _"We will discuss these matters tomorrow…at length. Wolfram, see to it that they are not banished from the village. We…ah, we must wait until they recover."_

 _"Jawohl."_ Wolfram said reluctantly, glaring at us all and giving me a side-eye as I flinched and continued desperately trying to look unmagical. He passed us, and Sebastian trailed behind as he carried his young master with a care to the more severe scars, proceeding up the stairs in silence. I stayed behind for a minute or so, grabbing my Colt and knife in their respective holsters and applying a quick cleansing to strip off any of the lingering taint of mustard gas, before slinging the Colt over my shoulder like a purse and scampering off after the others, my knife dangling on my wrist like a comically large bracelet as I kept my elbow angled at a certain position on my hip and my fist firmly clenched near my bust, keeping the unfastened sheet from flaring open or dropping as I climbed the spiraling stone stairs, catching up with the others after a few moments.

I hopped up a few steps to come even with Sebastian, who glanced aside at me.

"What now?" I whispered in English, flicking my eyes between him and the broad back of Wolfram ahead of us.

"We shall wait until the young master awakens." Sebastian answered, adjusting his grip on Ciel minutely. "Then, I believe, we shall endeavor to discover the source of this so-called gas and what the true purpose of this village is."

"M'kay. I think I freaked out Wolfram with the fact I healed myself, so he doesn't believe in magic, at least, despite what Sieglinde says."

Sebastian hummed low in his throat, eyes narrowing contemplatively at the man ahead of us. I wasn't sure how much he'd spotted, since Scooby-Doo-esque charades were harder to pull off without modern technology as I knew it and Sebastian just might not have the experience to identify those patterns specifically, but I was definitely sure he had picked up on the fact that a lot of what went on around here was staged as shit.

What he would _do_ about it, though, was anyone's guess…

_***Time Skip***_

Unsurprisingly, after I'd gone to get some real clothes back on again, when I returned to Ciel's room the other servants had all freaked when Sebastian brought the injured Ciel up, and were fluttering and fussing over him until Sebastian seemed seriously tempted to use his greater height to just lift Ciel above their reach like a misbehaving puppy, though he nobly refrained, instead choosing to put Ciel in his bed and carefully tuck him in. It was clear that nothing short of force was going to kick the other servants out of the room before Ciel woke up, so Sebastian merely sighed and went on with his work tending to Ciel as I munched on the remaining cookies and treats from the earlier tea-tray in a mindless daze, wrapped in a blanket in the corner nearest to the bed, seeking to replenish my lost energy from working magic and also running around at night after a long day.

Eventually, as it became clear Ciel wasn't going to wake up anytime soon, the other servants gradually calmed their fussing and went into a doze, with Mey-rin slouched in the armless high-backed chair near me, and Bardroy eventually slumping against her on the floor between Mey-rin and myself, snoring lightly. I couldn't see it, but I knew that eventually Finny curled up on the floor on the other side of the bed like a puppy, and Snake was kneeling against the foot of the bed with his upper body stretched over it and arms outflung, breathing softly.

I dropped off too, slumped in my corner as I finished all the teacakes. Sleeping upright was a tricky thing, but I'd managed it once or twice on long plane trips, and I managed it again now, though my slumber was light and I frequently woke to see a sleepless Sebastian bent over Ciel or taking out various medical materials, or my fellow servants limp and asleep in various different positions, including Tanaka, who had come in at some indeterminate time after I'd passed out and was slouched in a chair similar to Mey-rin.

The light increased, and I drifted in and out of awareness at least once by the appearance of sunlight streaming across the floor, but was finally awoken for real to a brightly-shining room by the sound of Ciel's scream.

Everyone jerked up, seeing Ciel blindly reaching above himself with a bandaged arm, and Finny lunged upright from the floor, grabbing Ciel's other hand, which lay outside the blankets. Snake got up from his knees as Mey-rin bolted upright in her chair and Bardroy jerked awake beside her, Sebastian halting mid-stride with a basin of water and Tanaka straightening from his place standing at the foot of the bed.

I scrambled to my feet as Sebastian hastily put the basin on the nightstand. "Young master!" he cried as Ciel wheezed raggedly, his visible eye stretched wide with shock or horror. Sebastian relaxed at the lack of physical damage, however, as a teary-eyed Finny clutched Ciel's other hand and Snake stepped up to Finny's shoulder.

"Scared the life outta me, ya did!" Bardroy said with a sigh as he heaved himself to his feet, putting both hands on his hips.

"Yes, indeed." Tanaka agreed.

"How are you feeling, young master Ciel?" Mey-rin asked, curling a hand before her chest. "How d'you do?"

"Ci…el?" Ciel quavered weakly, making me blink and tilt my head as he began to shake, eye growing haunted. "Ah. Agh…"

"Young master?" Sebastian asked with concern, leaning over him and reaching out for that lifted hand. "Is something wrong?"

The moment his fingers touched Ciel's wrist, the young earl shuddered and _screamed_ , whipping his arm out and away to fling aside Sebastian's hand. Sebastian recoiled in shock as I gasped alongside the others, startled by the sudden movement, and Ciel pulled himself over to Finny, clutching at him and practically dragging him over by Ciel's suddenly fierce grip on the gardener's hand.

"N-noooo!" he cried desperately. "Ciel doesn't want to be hurt anymore!"

I blinked again as Ciel continued to shake, clinging to Finny desperately.

_Ciel…? Why refer to himself in third person like that?_

"Its dark…where am I?" Ciel whimpered. "I'm scared…"

"Young master, what is the matter?" Sebastian asked, reaching out again. "It is not dark at-"

Tanaka grabbed his hand and shook his head, stopping the demon as Sebastian looked at Tanaka with a betrayed expression.

"Who's there? I can't see anything." Ciel choked as he pressed against Finny like a chick seeking shelter with its mother.

Sebastian inhaled softly. "No…"

"I believe the young master probably cannot see." Tanaka said sorrowfully, and Ciel flinched.

"Someone, please light up the room, I'm begging you!"

Sebastian frowned, before immediately and silently ushering all the rest of us out of the room as Mey-rin began to cry. Outside in the hallway, she was free to weep freely without disturbing (well, further disturbing) Ciel, and we were free to rage and be confused.

"Y-young master's…eyes are…uuh!" Mey-rin hiccupped between her sobs, and Bardroy scowled.

"Enough! Stop yer bawlin' and watch your mouth, woman! We dunno that his sight's gone for good!" he said with a harshness that bordered on desperation.

"But we can't even take care of him when he's like that –says Keats." Snake pointed out, gesturing briefly.

"No, we can't. He not only rejected us, but even Sebastian. What in the world has come over the young master?" Tanaka mused, shaking his head slowly.

"Boy's eggs are scrambled." I said firmly, twirling a finger around my ear. "Referring to himself in third person? Whoo-hoo! There's some real messed-up psychological trauma right there."

"I wonder why he didn't lash out at Finny, then." Bardroy growled, shaking a cigarette out of his pack and biting down on it.

Sebastian said nothing, but merely frowned, hand held to his chin. Tanaka looked at him.

"What will you do now, Sebastian?" he asked.

The butler sighed, pulling out his silver pocketwatch and snapping it open. "If the young master commands me not to touch him, I cannot touch him." he said sadly. "I will ask Lady Sullivan for advice when she awakens. You all go and get some rest now."

Mey-rin sniffled as she wiped the lingering tears from her eyes with her sleeve. "A-and you, Mister Sebastian? What will you…?"

"There is something I must see to." Sebastian said over his shoulder as he headed off, and since he hadn't given me a significant look or anything, I decided to take the route of blissful laziness and act on the assumption that he wanted to do whatever he was going to do without me.

Thus thinking, I went with the others to zonk out on a proper bed, for once.

Of course, when Sieglinde woke up, such paltry measures wouldn't be enough to get me out of having breakfast with her. Oh no, not with the novelty of being the first new female she had met, possibly ever depending on how they rotated the so-called villagers of Wolfssclucht, _and_ being from the outside world, and of course _forget_ me trying to sleep in or avoid her when I had outed myself as a fellow witch. Honestly, I was a bit surprised she hadn't broken down my door via Wolfram or something the moment Ciel and Sebastian were taken care of, and never mind the fact we both needed to sleep.

So, yawning, down to the great hall I trudged, and was welcomed by a rather impressive spread of breakfast items, clearly courtesy of one angelically smiling Sebastian.

 _"I apologize for all the trouble we caused last night."_ he said as Sieglinde all but drooled, looking at all the dishes with shining eyes. _"As a token of gratitude, I have prepared a late breakfast for you, my lady. I hope you enjoy it."_

I was deeply suspicious of how helpfully Sebastian directed Sieglinde's attention to all the dishes before her and leading her to ignore me completely as she devoured them, considering it wasn't exactly in his nature to do me any favors. Then again, Wolfram was standing behind her chair and glowering fiercely at us both, and perhaps the demonic butler didn't want Sieglinde pelting me with questions about magic and thus drawing attention to the fact that I was much less of a fraud than the people putting up the charade we were investigating.

Or at least, I _hoped_ that was why Sebastian was indirectly helping me out. Freebies from him seemed ominous.

I bumped that estimate up from a "maybe" to a hard "probably" as Sebastian laid out Ciel's troubles with a masterfully concerned expression between adding and removing dishes, just enough eyebrow-furrowing and plaintive words to make it appear as though Ciel's state genuinely distressed him –which was false– and that he wanted the young master healthy again as soon as humanly possible –which was true.

 _"I see."_ Sieglinde mused as she took a dainty bite off her latest forkful of food, frowning thoughtfully. _"So the miasma has impaired his sight…"_

 _"Will the young master's eyes heal, my lady?"_ Sebastian asked as he set down a saucer and cup of tea in front of her. Sieglinde tapped her fork back down onto her plate.

_"I need to examine him first…but you say no one can get near him?"_

_"For some reason, he will allow our gardener alone to touch him."_ Sebastian explained, and Sieglinde hummed thoughtfully, looking upwards.

 _"So he goes for the halfway between muscular and soft type, does he? What a peculiar fellow…"_ she mumbled, making Sebastian's eyes widen.

_"Pardon me, Lady Sullivan?"_

_"Oh! No, nothing!"_ she stammered quickly, and coughed into her fist. _"The miasma of the Werewolves' Forest weakens a human's heart and intensifies his fear. There may be a reason why he only allows the gardener to approach him."_

Sebastian's eyebrows furrowed again, but this time it seemed to be in genuine thoughtfulness rather than a caretaker's façade. _"If that is so…then it might be "adults" whom the young master wishes to keep away…"_ he murmured, as though to himself.

 _"Why would that be?"_ Sieglinde asked as I cast a concerned eye on the butler, not so much worried for him as I was worried about what that meant for Ciel.

 _"The young master has his reasons."_ Sebastian said with a disarming smile.

Yup, definitely something to be concerned over.

 _"Indeed?"_ Sieglinde asked slowly, maybe not quite so well versed in Sebastian's particular brand of bullshittery as me, but definitely aware that there was more to his answer than met the eye. She looked at me inquisitively, but I shook my head, shrugging a little as I did. I hadn't been with Ciel when that particular trauma occurred, whether as a physical presence (obviously impossible, since I didn't exist in this world until about seven months ago) or even as an outside reader, since I had not yet quite caught up to _Black Butler_ by the time I'd inadvertently sucked myself into another world.

Well, okay, it had been…advertently? deliberately? whatever, but I certainly hadn't expected said spell to _work_ , never mind as well as it had. The whole scenario had been a dumb, jokey, wish-fulfillment thing that I hadn't thought through the whole way.

Actually, my thought process had started at "hey this'd be cool" and stopped two seconds later at "I should bring a bag of supplies on the outside bet it actually works."

Hindsight. Twenty-fucking-twenty.

Sebastian's voice brought me back to the present.

_"In any case, what specifically causes the murk in the forest?"_

_"It is evil magical power given off by the wolfman."_ Sieglinde said immediately. _"A human affected by it is cursed and takes on the shape of something resembling a demon. Only the secret elixir of the Emerald Witch can break that curse."_

Sebastian and I exchanged glances, and jumped a little as Wolfram slammed both hands down on the table with a loud _bang_.

 _"That's why I told you not to enter the forest!"_ he snarled, glaring fiercely at us both. _"So why'd you go in when you'd already been warned off, huh?!"_

Striding forward in two quick steps, he grabbed Sebastian by his tie and undershirt both and hauled him up. Tall as the butler was, Wolfram was taller still, and nearly twice as broad across the shoulders, so that even knowing Sebastian could probably kill Wolfram with a flick of his wrist, I still cringed in sympathetic intimidation as Wolfram yelled in Sebastian's face.

_"The wolfman has no desire to hurt people indiscriminately! Why won't you understand?!"_

_"Enough, Wolfram!"_ Sieglinde commanded, making him shut up and merely grind his teeth as he stared down an on-tiptoes Sebastian, who seemed coolly unimpressed by Wolfram's outburst despite that.

"Tch!" he finally scoffed, letting go and striding back to his place behind Sieglinde's chair.

 _"I… **we** , went into the forest,"_ Sebastian explained, tugging his suit lapels straight again and adjusting his tie back into the proper formation. _"-because we were curious about Herr Wolfram, you see."_

He beamed his angelic smile, holding a hand over his chest.

_"We have none of us met a wolfman, despite having encountered any number of devils and Grim Reapers."_

I winced and fingered my nose at the memory of the latter as Sieglinde and Wolfram gaped at Sebastian in black shock.

_"…come again?"_

A brief smile twitched his lips, before it was gone. _"Well, anyway, only you can break the young master's curse."_ Sebastian said, addressing Sieglinde, before he knelt, bowing his head respectfully. _"Lady Sullivan. Please save the young master from what ails him. If you help him…I shall gladly do whatever you bid of me."_

 _"Wha-?!"_ Wolfram choked indignantly.

Sieglinde grinned, however. _"Heh! Very well. Then, Sebastian, I shall have you for my butler until Ciel has completely recovered."_ she said, languidly stretching out her hand as though giving an imperial decree. Considering the kind of pampering and authority given to her by the so-called villagers, it probably wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine herself in that role.

 _"No, my lady!"_ Wolfram cried in alarm, stepping forward a little to place himself almost between Sieglinde and Sebastian. _"This man is far too suspicious!"_

 _"He's a rare visitor from the world beyond. I have so many things I want to ask him!"_ Sieglinde scoffed, folding her arms. _"Besides, I've already made up my mind!"_

_"Please, my l-"_

_"I'll have him take me by the hand and teach me step by step."_ Sieglinde continued, blithely ignoring her manservant. _"Step by step~…"_

She giggled into her hand, and I hissed, swiping my finger across my neck a few times. Sadly, she didn't notice, instead turning to admonish Wolfram.

_"Moreover, Wolf! Sebastian is more capable than you, so it would do you good to learn from his example too."_

Wolfram visibly wilted under the force of her imperious glare.

 _"Ja."_ he mumbled, clearly still none too pleased about our existence in the castle, but just as clearly aware he couldn't do anything about it.

I took that opportunity to stand up, since I'd finished my own breakfast a while ago and wanted to get at least something of a cover story down before Sieglinde pounced on me again.

 _"Speaking of such things, is it alright if Sebastian and I check on the young master?"_ I asked, attempting to be brisk and businesslike. ,em>"Perhaps he's recovered somewhat since we were gone."

From the expressions on their faces, neither Sieglinde nor Wolfram thought that likely, but Sebastian picked up on what I was trying to do as he stood again, offering a smile.

_"Indeed, and we must alert the other servants of our change of plans. If you'll excuse us."_

He bowed the both of us out of the room, and I let out a long, slow breath of relief as the doors of the dining hall closed behind us. There was a brief moment of silence, before we both turned and started off down the hall as though on an unseen signal.

"So, that was bullshit." I said after a moment. "That was bullshit, right?"

"As much as I…disparage your vulgarity…" Sebastian said slowly. "Yes, yes it was."

"'Evil miasma the werewolf's cloaked in' – _such_ bullshit."

He rolled his eyes, though whether it was at my continued profanity or exasperation at their phony excuse, I wasn't sure. Maybe both.

"Leaving aside the fact that devils such as I are _immune_ to the auras of evil spirits," Here he picked with annoyance at the cotton padding taped over the worst of his blisters on his cheek. "-your statement on the future evolution of technology and the obvious poisonous effect said murk has on the surrounding environment certainly seems to indicate a chemical weapon."

"Sieglinde doesn't seem to know about it." I pointed out, wanting to spare her any heartless inquiries from the demon, and Sebastian nodded, frowning thoughtfully to himself.

"Indeed. In fact, most of this charade seems to be geared specifically towards immersing her in the illusion of real magic."

"Caught the bullshit in the town square, huh?" I asked smugly, nudging him with my elbow.

"A more staged setting I have never seen." Sebastian replied, smoothly avoiding the elbow with a half-step to the side. "We can certainly assume at this point that some sort of conspiracy is mired around her, likely with the intent to push her to create or maintain some type of developing chemical gas."

"Jeez!" I folded my arms behind my head, scowling, as we walked along. "Who asks an eleven-year-old to research chemical warfare?! Assholes!"

"Were I in the habit of being human, I certainly would not trust anything so vital and complex to a child." Sebastian noted, deadpan.

"I meant it's a cruel thing to do to a kid."

"Oh, I'm aware of that. My point still stands."

"Dick."

Sebastian smirked, looking down on me from his loftier height. "I must say, it's amusing how you're constantly surprised at such a simple thing as my basic nature."

"Ah mah na ma na ma na." I minced, flapping my hand like a puppet's mouth as I mocked both his statement and his oh-so-perfect pronunciation of it. I lowered my hand again and frowned as we turned to walk up the stairs towards Ciel's room. "So what are we gonna _do_ about it?"

"The young master needs to convalesce." Sebastian said, with noted reluctance. Knowing him, and remembering his proposed solution in the manga –an eye for an eye approach that involved shocking Ciel out of his deep psychological trauma– his medical solution to just about any kind of injury seemed to be telling the victim "don't be such a baby" before ripping a bandage off.

Sebastian would not be a good doctor. Ever. He probably wouldn't even look good in the uniform. Doctor Sebastian. Nurse Sebastian?

Getting off topic.

"Uh, so I guess we should focus on getting more details and collecting evidence now?" I suggested hastily, my cheeks a little pink.

"It would seem to be the best course of action." Sebastian agreed.

"And if everyone here except Sieglinde knows the truth or whatever, I don't think I should be too, er, obvious or provable in my magic stuff." I said, scratching my cheek sheepishly.

"This is a problem that would've been avoided had you endured the same treatment as the young master and I." Sebastian pointed out, and I snorted.

"I am not getting naked and in arm's reach of you, _ever_." I said with a shudder. Sure, I had relaxed enough into a state of wary truce with Sebastian that I was comfortable bantering with him, but, well. Nude was the most psychologically and physically vulnerable state possible for a human to be in.

Uh-uh. _Not_ happening.

"Not even for medical purposes?" Sebastian asked with a smirk, quirking a brow at me.

"Oh don't act like you wouldn't try to freak me out if I did –some creepy shit like poking my foot with your demon tendrils or yanking me down with 'em like a sea monster or something. Don't even _pretend_."

Sebastian snickered, completely unrepentant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: June 2nd, 2020, 4.00 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: June 2nd, 2020, 3.31 PM USA Central Time


	61. That Butler, Radiant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arya being confused for the German word for analgesic is natural, because unlike most of her other languages, she actually learned German organically and there would be words she wouldn't have come across before. Since I didn't even know what analgesic was in ENGLISH without looking it up, it seemed fair she wouldn't have learned the word in German. Sieglinde didn't know what the word addictive meant because she is small and has yet to learn many things.
> 
> Also, Wicca and its relationship with witchcraft/witches is deeply complex and highly reliant on context and situation, and I understand this. Referring to a Wiccan as a witch can be derogatory. However, the two are inextricably linked and Arya's not about to belt out the entire history of said belief to an eleven-year-old, no matter how clever she is. 
> 
> I also put more in about alchemy because I casually know more about alchemy than I do Wicca right now, and thought it'd be nice to introduce something a little less well-trodden.

_Arya's POV:_

One brisk conversation later in between the individual stops as Sebastian and I went to hook up with the other servants and check on a still-spastic Ciel, we had our game plan laid out. Since both Sebastian and I were more than moderately sure that this whole thing was a charade that involved the production of mustard gas, the investigative portion of our mission was mostly finished, except for two things. One, we (he) didn't know _why_ the charade was in place, nor why Sieglinde was being immersed in it. Two, we weren't sure of the exact means and motive behind this whole operation. So there was still stuff to look into.

On Sebastian's end, and honestly a little bit with me as well, we were stuck because of Ciel's traumatized quasi-catatonic state. Though Sebastian obviously had _some_ independence, since he wasn't frozen in place like a malfunctioning NPC now that Ciel was unable to give orders, the demon still seemed unable to perform in ways not laid out by Ciel's last spoken commands. For example, he could poke around and look into things and such, but taking direct action on what he found required _new_ orders from his master, orders that were not exactly forthcoming any time soon.

So, Sebastian couldn't really do anything beyond investigate and delay. On the flip side of that, I could theoretically take action on whatever our group uncovered, but as good a shot as I was now with my Colt, not to mention the extra edge of my magic, I was still not even remotely confident I could take out an entire military base all by myself, with maybe the other servants helping.

Heck, I wasn't even sure we could take it out as a group without Sebastian. All of us were freakishly good in various ways, but Sebastian neutralized the gas facility early on _and_ tied up the tank before he destroyed it, giving the others a chance to escape in the manga, so it was entirely possible that without his input we'd be run down.

I wasn't eager to put that to the test, so similarly, I couldn't do anything either, or at least, not yet. Magically trying to heal Ciel's trauma wasn't something I was sure I could manage, since that would involve poking around in his head and that was a delicate procedure at the best of times, never mind when the one doing the poking was still effectively a novice and the one being poked was immersed in a PTSD attack.

So we were both stuck delaying, and to make sure we effectively delayed, we needed to be on the same page.

Sebastian could play at being Sieglinde's butler, teaching her about proper manners and the outside world, and I could throw in a delayed-delaying tactic of my own, since Sieglinde _was_ going to demand talking with me about magic at one point and the so-called magic she employed was merely science and chemistry under a different name. I needed to have a framework that wouldn't contradict her world views, or at least, not yet, and I needed to come up with it _fast_.

Therefore, I'd need to come up with a makeshift lesson plan, and the need to do so could excuse me for the rest of today, at least. Sebastian could fend off Sieglinde's attentions for an equal amount of time, or if he couldn't, distract her with tales of the outside world. The other servants could be distracted by an updated briefing –reminding them to obey the rules our hosts set out, for now, and not cause trouble while they and we kept our eyes and ears open for trouble– and the need to keep checking on and worrying over Ciel.

That'd give us enough time to settle in and get off the back foot, and tomorrow we could start investigating and dealing with Sieglinde in earnest, since by that time I'd have prepared a suitable statement that would fly under Wolfram's radar but still check out in Sieglinde's logic.

So with my homework assigned and excuses given, lunchtime found me laying on my stomach on my bed in my room, and I frowned at the pages of my notebook/journal, idly kicking my heels.

First things first, I knew Sieglinde was taught magic as it applied in terms of chemistry. The solution she used to help heal and cleanse Ciel and Sebastian was likely a mix of various different herbs and other such things to counteract the effect of the mustard gas, and the chant she did –I hadn't been paying attention at the time, but I knew she recited something in the manga– was likely a sort of primitive timer: it took her X long to repeat the words, and the victims being cleansed in the cauldron probably needed to remain under for that same X amount of time. Pretty simple.

Similarly, the potion she used to help the woman who'd been "clawed" by the wolfman was probably also some kind of antiseptic or wound-sealing solution, a theory only reinforced by the fact that it had stung the woman as it seeped into her.

So, everything Sieglinde had been taught in terms of "magic" was likely couched in scientific and chemical terms, though gussied up with a fair amount of occult titles. Ergo, if I wanted to teach her anything in a way that didn't interrupt the flow of the manga –including her discovering the ultimate spell that was really an extraordinarily deadly form of chemical gas, since that was a catalyst for so much of what happened afterwards– I would need to somehow come up with something that didn't contradict any of her prior convictions _or_ give her new ideas.

No pressure.

The "don't give her new ideas" ticked off showing her any magical creatures –on the off chance I could even get benevolent ones in the middle of an area swamped by poison and in proximity to a demon– and explaining the framework of magic as I knew it, sadly. I also couldn't demonstrate my tools or my magic spells, since that would inevitably lead to questions about how my magic worked and if she could try, which would obviously fuck everything over. I'd also left my apocalypse bag at the manor, since I wasn't altogether sure I'd be able to preserve its contents here, and so I didn't even _have_ my tools.

Even just furthering Sieglinde's knowledge of herbal remedies and how that interplayed with magic was risky, since she was bound to ask about the fact that I had the kind of magic that glowed and was physically tangible and had immediate, otherwise-impossible effects in the real world, something unlike all the magic she herself had been working up until this point.

I groaned and rolled over to lay on my back, pouting up at the drapes above my bed. This was hard. Teaching was hard. Life was hard. Why couldn't we just bust Sieglinde out of here and I could actually teach her _proper_ magic, instead of lip-service to the stupid façade she'd been raised in?

My current process was also somewhat complicated by the fact I had never taught anyone anything before.

Bah. Not like that mattered. How hard could it be?

I rolled back over again with another groan, now scowling with determination at my notebook, which lay innocently on the bed before me. I could get this. I could totally get this. Just, just feed her some bullshit. I was good at making shit up. I'd been lying by omission to Ciel and fucking _Sebastian_ for _months_ , and as far as I knew, neither of them even suspected that I had any more knowledge about the things that went on around here than what merely being from the future would grant me.

And I was gonna keep that way, if only because my meta knowledge would run out soon anyways and neither Ciel nor Sebastian were likely to be forgiving if they found out I'd been keeping that kind of secret from them this whole time.

Hmm…secrets…kind of knowledge…

I perked up as a lightbulb all but appeared above my head. Who knows, maybe if this was still an anime, there would've been one. Sieglinde was an absolute nut about things from the outside world, and I knew there were more types of magical methodology in this world and others than you could shake a wand at. Even the broadest strokes –alchemists, pagans, and the boatload of beliefs and practices native to countries and cultures all over the world– had categories and subcategories, and Sieglinde and I could waffle on about all the various philosophical underpinnings for _weeks_ and never get an inch closer to anything that was the slightest bit practical _or_ relevant to her current mindset!

Yes! Philosophical bullshit! That was the answer to all my problems here!

I scrambled to find a free page towards the middle of my book and began writing frantically, trying to jot down everything I remembered from the brief comparative lessons Britain had taught me, and stuff I knew on my own from the research and reading I had done in this world. My journal was seriously getting stuffed and was on the verge of being full, but as long as I had extra pages and the magic to put them in and expand the binding, I was gonna keep using it.

In fact, there might be some stuff in my earlier notation pages that might help me out with this…

_***Time Skip***_

True to plan, or at least how we had hoped things would go, writing down what I would need to address Sieglinde took all day, with me only scurrying out from my room on a couple occasions to grab a meal before running back like a grad student cramming for an exam. Writing was a lot harder when you had to make the movements for each specific letter with one hand and not just type, though I certainly had the practice of it now, since it'd been eight months since I'd last been able to actually type.

Well, technically speaking, it wasn't quite as long as that, since I'd typed out a few things when I sent my stuff to Britain for him to proofread, but since that was a one-time thing and not _reliable_ contact, I was justified in stating I hadn't seen a proper keyboard in months.

And since I'd needed to write out all the complex nonsense of my spell, well…I was definitely more proficient at writing now, not to mention in possession of a much stronger wrist and, less beneficially, writer's cramp.

I brought the fruit of my labors with me in the pocket of my dress down to the kitchen the next morning, where all our servants were assembled, along with Wolfram and three women: the strict, angry-looking Hilde who had threatened us when we first got here and called us out to the supposed attack on one of the villagers, a more solemn-looking woman with long black hair partially tied in a bun at the back of her head, and a much-younger woman with her blonde hair in two buns covered by a plain black wimple, and a bust that rivaled Ukraine's.

Look, it was hard not to notice that kind of thing when –unlike in my time and culture, when breasts were sexualized– most medieval cultures saw boobs as merely organs to feed children, and as consequence there was no problem with having a neckline so low that some of these women's nipples would probably pop out if they took a deep enough breath. I half-wondered how the blonde one got about her day.

"Good morning, everyone." Sebastian said in English as he walked in, and the other Phantomhive servants all smiled and greeted him back.

"Good morning~!"

Sebastian raised an eyebrow as he turned to the three unknowns, who were clustered together, and Wolfram straightened up from where he had been sulkily leaning against the kitchen table, arms folded.

 _"Women from the village supply our foodstuffs and help dress my lady."_ he explained, and Sebastian nodded slowly.

 _"Is that so?"_ He performed an elegant bow. _"Excuse me for not introducing myself earlier. I am Sebastian. I will be serving as Lady Sullivan's butler for a short time."_

_"I'm Hilde."_

_"I'm Grete."_ said the black-haired one.

 _"I'm Anne."_ said the blonde.

 _"As I will be imposing on you for a while yet, please do not hesitate to ask for my help in any way."_ Sebastian said brightly as Wolfram glowered at him. He then turned to the rest of us and clapped his hands sharply. "Now then! Your duties for today!"

We all straightened under his imperious glare.

"Bardroy, prepare for lunch."

"Gotcha!"

"Snake, polish the silverware."

"Understood –says Emily."

"Mey-rin, the linens, if you please."

"Yes sir!" she chirped.

"Finny, you are to look after the young master."

"Y-" Finny began happily, before he realized what Sebastian said and lowered his arm, gaping in shock. "EH?! That's my duty!?"

"Only you can take care of the young master at present." Sebastian said with a put-upon sigh, both hands on his hips as Finny spluttered uncertainly. "If he can keep his food down, serve him a light breakfast. If he won't eat…give him some warm milk with honey."

"Warm…milk?" Finny asked tentatively.

"Prior to all this, it was most effective in coaxing the young master." Sebastian noted, putting a hand to his chin. "I shall tend to Lady Sullivan, and Miss Thompson shall accompany me. Mister Tanaka, the usual will be fine. Now off you go!"

The other servants scattered to attend to their duties, and me, knowing what was good for me, did not walk over to stand at Sebastian's shoulder as he moved to prepare a morning tea tray for Sieglinde. One, I knew the butler had a certain way of doing things and would not hesitate to push me out of the way, even to the point of bowling me over, if he was attending to his task, and two, Wolfram was standing practically on top of him, arms folded and _looming_ very deliberately over Sebastian as though waiting for the slightest excuse to kick him bodily out of the castle.

Knowing him and what he had to lose, he probably was.

Nonetheless, Sebastian made up the tray and I hopped off the low wooden bench by the kitchen table as he took it up, following both him and Wolfram up the winding, occasionally near-horizontal staircase to Sieglinde's tower. Wolfram alternated between harsh glaring at Sebastian and occasional unreadable, uncertain looks towards me, still obviously thrown by what I'd done two nights ago with the mustard gas.

Hilde had accompanied us as well, and it was her that opened the doors to what was clearly the master bedroom of the whole castle as Sebastian called a greeting.

_"Lady Sullivan! It is time for you to wake up!"_

…wait a second. There was this whole castle, obviously not a repurposed one, since no medieval architect would make a tower this lopsided and actually have it stay up. Had the people that started this project _actually_ made an entire castle, purely for the purposes of maintaining their facade?

I was somewhere between impressed at the dedication and appalled at the wastefulness of that.

Looking around Sieglinde's room as she yawned and stretched upright in her rounded bed, I was envious of the large glass stars hanging from the ceiling on slender chains, and amused by the hobbyhorse in a corner and the witch's broom leaning against a wall. There were mushrooms and a cow skull atop her wardrobe, as well as a foot-high pyramid of glass that seemed to serve double function as a cabinet. Several animal heads, mostly mammalian, decorated her walls, as well as a framed display of a preserved bat, wings outstretched. A small chest or oddly-formed table was beneath one of these heads, covered in a trio of three candles.

Good to know they kept to a theme.

 _"Today's tea is Ronnefeldt's Ceylon blend."_ Sebastian announced, setting down the tray and handing over the saucer and cup as Sieglinde drowsily took them.

 _"Never heard of it."_ she mumbled, sniffing the steaming liquid. _"Is that the name of an herb?"_

 _"I hope you like it."_ Sebastian said in lieu of a direct answer, and Sieglinde took a cautious sip, then brightened.

_"Delicious! I mean, this is the first time I've had tea to wake me up."_

_"It is the butler's duty to allow his master to awaken refreshed."_ Sebastian said, which I took as a sly jab towards Wolfram, perhaps payback for all the needless and apparently irritating looming he was doing.

Sieglinde hummed, then looked at her manservant. _"Wolf, follow his example!"_

A tick mark bloomed on Wolfram's forehead, and it took a few tries before he was able to growl out a simple _"J-ja."_

Definitely payback.

Sieglinde quickly drained her cup and scooted forward until she was seated on the very edge of the bed, and as she handed off the cup Hilde approached with some garments she'd taken out of the huge wardrobe. _"Now, Mistress Sullivan, allow me to change your-"_

 _"I wish to don the clothing of the outside world!"_ Sieglinde interrupted brightly, swinging her bandage-bound legs back and forth.

 _"Excuse me?!"_ Both Hilde and Wolfram yelled at the same time, and Sebastian sweatdropped.

_"I am afraid the young master's clothes along would fit you…"_

_"That's fine! Let's have them!"_ Sieglinde singsonged, grinning, making Hilde fall to her knees, reaching out desperately.

_"No, Mistress Sullivan! You mustn't wear men's clothes!"_

_"I don't mind."_ Sieglinde said firmly, but Sebastian leaned forward and pulled up a corner of her tasseled blanket before the argument could truly get started.

_"My lady. May I have this coverlet?"_

_"Yes, all right…"_ Sieglinde said, and Sebastian promptly whisked it off the bed, stepping rapidly out of the room. I plopped down beside Sieglinde as she called after him in alarm. _"But what do you intend to wi-"_

 _"I shall return presently."_ Sebastian beamed, sticking his head back through the door, before withdrawing completely.

Sieglinde and I looked at each other. Hilde and Wolfram frowned after the retreating butler.

 _"You can totally wear men's clothes."_ I told Sieglinde after a moment, making her grin. _"You have **no idea** how freeing trousers can be."_

 _"A-are you trying to turn my lady into some sort of deviant?!"_ Wolfram squawked indignantly as he heard that, whipping his head back around to look at us. I rolled my eyes and flicked my hand in a shooing motion at him.

 _"Please, trousers are **infinitely** more practical for getting things done than a skirt could ever be, unless its hem is right at the thighs."_ I pointed to my own in indication, making him redden. The anti-leg thing was universal? I'd thought it was just a British trait.

 _"Yes, yes, Wolf,"_ Sieglinde said, mimicking me –to my delight– as she carefully repeated the same shooing motion from her place beside me on the bed. _"Arya lives in the outside world, so surely she must know how fashions have progressed since our time. After all, we of the village haven't updated our fashion in hundreds of years!"_

So many backhanded understatements in those two sentences. For one, my sense of fashion, as it was, _was_ hundreds of years past theirs, and I knew quite well, even if Sieglinde didn't, that Wolfram was part of the outside world.

And yet I couldn't laugh at _any_ of that. My life was suffering.

 _"Plus, you're young enough that wearing trousers and pinning your hair up in the right way makes you look like a boy, and that gets you a lot more privileges than you might think."_ I said, gently poking her cheek. _"Me, I have to bind my chest down with a special corset."_

Sieglinde gasped in delight, holding a hand to her mouth. _"What deviance were you partaking of that required such a costume?"_ she asked as though scandalized, though her dancing eyes and excited expression told me she was anything but.

 _"I was-"_ I realized midsentence that admitting I was part of an investigative team for crimes in Britain would not go down well with the two conspiracy members in the room. _"-trying to get secret manuscripts from a university! I had to forge a whole new identity and cut my hair short like a boy's, and then I bound my chest down with a special corset and wore a suit and they **bought** it! I fooled the whole school for two months, and then me and some friends broke in to get the manuscripts, but then there were guards there!"_

Sieglinde gasped again and scooted closer as I waved my arms in demonstration, her eyes sparkling like stars.

_"So we had this fight, y'know? And then this **other** magician showed up, all like 'Muhaha, these manuscripts are mine, I'm going to use them to raise the dead and be evil' and we were all like 'Oh no you didn't!' and then we started fighting him and his minions, and I punched one right in the face!"_

I smacked my fist into my open palm, grinning, as Sieglinde looked at me like I was Santa Claus.

_"And we defeated them all and the evil magician was all like 'Oh no, please, mercy, I have to run away before you catch me,' and he **did** , he ran like a sissy and we were all like 'Whoo-hoo! We win! Let's put these manuscripts somewhere safe' and we did and it was a happy ending for everyone!"_

_"That is **not** how that happened."_ Sebastian said with a raised brow from the doorway, holding a miniature dress that wouldn't look out of place on an Alice in Wonderland cover.

 _Would you rather I told her the version that involves murder, unethical experiments, and undead zombies?_ My twitching eyebrow mutely asked in return.

 _"Yes, well, we still won,"_ I scoffed, leaning back on the bed and swinging my legs. _"-and we're awesome, and that's why wearing trousers is better than dresses, because then you can run and dodge and roundhouse kick your opponent right in his stupid face. Whacha!"_

I lifted my arms from the bedspread, jerking them into a karate position and grinning as I shouted this last word.

"Vacha!" Sieglinde agreed from beside me, copying my movement with more enthusiasm than coordination as she flailed her arms into a vaguely combative pose.

You know, there were some times when the desire to hug something adorable was so physically strong it could only be expressed as the desire to "glomp," as old-school fandom as that term may be. That being said, I wanted to glomp the shit out of Sieglinde right now. How could one eleven-year-old be so _cute_?! It had to be some kind of genetic freak, right? Whatever it was, there was one thought that vibrated throughout my entire being as I looked at how she copied me so innocently.

_This child is my child, and I will protect her with my **life**._

Sebastian all but rolled his eyes as he approached with the dress, and both Sieglinde and I scooted off the bed in preparation for her to be dressed. She even relied on me for support as she stepped into it with Sebastian's help, holding onto my hand as Wolfram politely averted his eyes and Hilde hovered nearby with a sour, watchful look on her face.

When everything was on, Sieglinde let go of my hand and looked down at herself with pleased surprise, her little legs trembling as she stood on her malformed feet. _"Amazing, Sebastian!"_ she gasped, plucking at the knee-length skirt. _"How did you manage to make this in such a short time?!"_

_"That is a trade secret. I am aware that it is inferior to the creation of a skilled dressmaker, but…"_

_"Not at all!"_ Sieglinde protested. _"It is most comfortable. I'm very happy with it!"_

Sebastian smirked and held out a hand. _"Now, my lady. It is time for breakfast."_

I had gotten used to it at this point, so I wasn't at all bitter to see that Sieglinde was once again placed at the head of the table in the dining hall and danced attendance on by both Sebastian and Wolfram, since she was the liege of this castle and of higher rank, nor was I envious of all the dishes laid out before her while I had to make due with getting my own things from the sideboard.

 _"Breakfast so soon?!"_ Sieglinde gushed excitedly as she saw the bounty. _"Wolf could never manage this alone. Now let's eat-"_

Sebastian's hand came down on top of hers as she grabbed one of her four forks at random.

 _"One moment, please. You are using the wrong utensil."_ he said, looming over her from his place by her shoulder.

 _"Th-the wrong utensil?"_ Sieglinde stammered in disbelief.

_"Indeed. The cutlery is to be used from the outside in. Use the outermost fork and knife to eat the hors d'oeuvres."_

Sieglinde pouted. _"I should be able to use whatever I want as long as I can eat with it…"_

A-yup. That was why I wasn't envious of the fancy plate setting. Fancy plate setting meant fancy manners, which meant that one had to attend to all of that nonsense when what you should _really_ be focused on was eating. On the servant's end of things, we got one cutlery set –knife, fork, spoon– if we were lucky, which meant we had to endure the unimaginable hardship of using the same silverware for each part of a meal.

However did we survive in such horrible privation.

 _"No, my lady."_ Sebastian said, looming even closer so that his upraised finger was nearly the only thing between he and Sieglinde's noses. _"A liege must have dignity. I am well aware that I am being disrespectful, but your table etiquette leaves much to be desired from a lady of your stature."_

 _"How dare you say that to my lady?!"_ Wolfram raged. Sebastian turned to favor him with an ice-cold look.

 _"Lavishing undue affection on your young mistress and spoiling her rotten is no duty for any butler."_ He turned back to Sieglinde with a softer expression. _"I realize I am playing the devil by mentioning this, but I do not wish for my lady to disgrace herself. Furthermore…"_

Sebastian beamed at Sieglinde.

_"One can never possess too much knowledge."_

Sieglinde visibly brightened. _"Knowledge…yes, truly! Sebastian! Teach me more!"_

I glowered at him from the other side of the table, which Sebastian ignored with his usual effortless ease. _Oh, thanks for upping the pressure for when **I** have to deal with teaching her._

 _"Very well, my lady."_ Sebastian said to Sieglinde, bowing.

_"What do I use for the soup?"_

_"This round one here…"_

The rest of the meal passed similarly, and Sieglinde finally collapsed back in her chair with a sigh of pleasure, patting her stomach. _"That was delicious!"_

 _"My lady."_ Sebastian chipped in immediately. _"When you have finished, place your utensils between the four and six o'clock positions, their handles parallel. The servants will then take them away."_

Sieglinde leaned forward, quickly arranging them. _"I see. Like this?"_

Sebastian nodded, and I made eye contact with Mey-rin as she came in to see if anything was needed, and walked completely into the room as she saw the position of Sieglinde's silverware.

"You doing okay?" I asked, and she nodded, moving to collect the dishes.

"You just remind Sebastian that young master Ciel needs him too!" she whispered back as she returned, and I smiled at her briefly. Sebastian hardly needed reminding, since he was going to _eat_ Ciel once he'd gotten his revenge and his soul had ripened, or whatever it was Sebastian was trying to do to him aside from the fulfillment of their contract.

But her concern came from a good place, and I was happy to pass it on, or at least, give the impression I was going to. Whispers or not, Sebastian had probably heard her anyway –though I actually wasn't quite sure of how sensitive his hearing and other senses were. Supernaturally strong only when convenient? Only when he tried or focused on it? Or were they omnipresent?

I'd probably have no chance to find out until I got out of this world and was able to read things in the manga and look them up on the wiki again. Eh. Could be worse.

 _"What are your schedules for today? I plan to ask the two of you lots of things!"_ Sieglinde asked excitedly as Sebastian stood on one side of her and Wolfram stood on the other.

 _"As you wish, my lady."_ Sebastian said.

 _"We're both available for as long as you'd like."_ I agreed.

 _"My lady!"_ Wolfram protested, and Sieglinde pouted at him with the exact same expression of skiving children everywhere.

 _"I'm going to perform my duties as the Emerald Witch!"_ she said defensively, in the exact same 'I'll do my homework/chores later, I promise!' tone, too.

Wolfram worked his jaw begrudgingly. _"…ja."_

_***Time Skip***_

Sebastian led us back to Sieglinde's bedroom, where a round table and high-backed chair was procured for her, and Sieglinde sat at it expectantly. Wolfram watched us with narrowed eyes and folded arms, a posture which he had not seemed to deviate from for the entire time we'd been in the castle.

 _"First, teach me the language of your country!"_ Sieglinde chirped, folding her arms before herself on the table.

I exchanged glances with Sebastian, who had somehow managed to procure the same narrow glasses on a chain that he had worn when pretending to be a tutor at Weston. Maybe he kept them in his suit somewhere?

 _"By that you mean English, I take it?"_ he asked, looking back at Sieglinde, who nodded.

_"It would help when examining Ciel."_

_"Indeed."_ Sebastian said, and lifted a book that he had put out on the table earlier. _"I fear that this is all we have by way of a suitable textbook. It may be a little difficult for an introduction…"_

 _"What book is it?"_ Sieglinde asked curiously.

_"A collection of English folk remedies."_

_"WHAT?!"_ Sieglinde gasped, snatching it right out of Sebastian's hands. She opened it at random, eyes shining as she pointed to a photo of a bottle on the page, the label of which read 'Opium Tincture'. _"Sebastian, what is this magic elixir?"_

 _"That would be laudanum."_

"Loud-an-um…?" Sieglinde repeated, skewing the world heavily towards a German pronunciation. _"The name sounds mysterious. Makes me nervous."_

_"It is mainly used as a cough suppressant and an analgesic."_

I blinked.

"Uh, _Analgetikum?"_ I asked of Sebastian. He briefly glanced at me.

"Analgesic."

" _The hell does that mean?!_ " I squawked in English.

It was a miracle Sebastian's eyes didn't pop out of his head, they rolled so hard. "Pain-reliever."

"Ah. Why couldn't you just _say_ that, though?"

 _"I know that one!"_ Sieglinde said confidently, waiting until our moment of linguistic confusion passed. _"It's a liquid medicine prepared from the seeds of the opium poppy."_

I winced, and leaned past her to point at the page as well. _"Yeah, and what they don't tell you in the book is that things extracted from poppy like this can be extremely addictive."_

_"Addictive?"_

_"Once you start taking them you can't stop, and you start to have an insatiable craving for them and the way they make you feel. Some people even commit crimes so they have the money for it, or they'll steal supplies of the drug. Depending on how much they take, they can even die from it."_ I explained, and watched her shiver. _"Its why you should always be careful not to give someone too much of it, even though it helps."_

 _"Fascinating!"_ Sieglinde chirped, before turning to another page. _"What's this?"_

 _"This is a remedy in which one is to fry bacon in oil and wrap it around one's neck in case of a sore throat."_ Sebastian said. _"According to the book, bacon has hidden therapeutic effects. I cannot speak to its efficacy, however."_

 _"Me neither."_ I agreed.

 _"What?! Bacon!? First time I've heard that!"_ Sieglinde gasped. _"Wolf! Bring me some bacon at once. I want to try this!"_

 _"J-ja."_ he stuttered obediently, obviously no more believing of its effectiveness than we were, before bowing out of the room.

 _"Um, Sieglinde, none of us have sore throats…"_ I pointed out awkwardly, scratching the back of my head.

 _"Hush, you!"_ Sieglinde swatted me in the stomach without looking away from the book. _"This is for the pursuit of knowledge!"_

_"Yeah, right, but like, how is that knowledge going to be correct if none of us have that problem…?"_

_"Shush!"_

_***Time Skip***_

Once we speedran learning English –I wasn't sure whether I should be impressed or appalled at how fast it went, nor if it was Sieglinde's raw intelligence or Sebastian's uncanny aptitude for teaching such things that was responsible– I was put in the metaphorical hot seat, as Sebastian went off to prepare food with the others. (My seat wasn't hot in the literal sense, though, since I'd dragged a padded vanity stool over to Sieglinde's table. Unlike Sebastian, I did need to sit down, and couldn't remain standing effortlessly for hours on end)

Wolfram remained looming close by, potentially just as interested in what I was about to say to Sieglinde as Sieglinde was. Luckily, I had two things to stymie him. One, I was about to bust out a whole truckload of philosophical nonsense. Two, I was going to do it in English, both because it was the language I was more comfortable in and also because Sieglinde was still new in her understanding of it, meaning that there was an additional layer of incomprehension for her to get through on her way to actually using what I told her.

I didn't like this. I wanted to show her, talk to her about _real_ magical stuff, but alas, such was impossible at the current time.

After the conspiracy was dealt with. After the conspiracy was dealt with.

"The thing about magic is that it's both a tool and a system." I explained, cracking open my journal on the table as Sieglinde scooted over with lively interest. "Magic is energy, like –like fire, and heat, or electricity."

She nodded solemnly.

"Because it's merely a certain kind of power, there are –eh, hundreds of different ways to use it. Kind of like how you can get an electrical current flowing through just about any metal, or how you can light nearly any substance on fire. Some ways are easier than others, just like some types of material are more flammable. You get me?"

Sieglinde nodded again. "What sort of magic do you use?" she asked, eyes shining, and I bit my lip and averted my eyes a little as I could practically _hear_ Wolfram's increased interest. Evidently his English extended far enough to understand that statement.

"Eh, that's not quite so important as what you use, since I'm set in my ways." I said hastily, scratching my ear. "Since I'm the older, er, witch, it's my responsibility to see you don't fall prey to something like threefold retribution by accident."

I leaned over and pointed to the diagram I'd drawn out on the page.

"In Wicca –which is a pagan belief system that typically worships the Triple Goddess and the Horned God and can be considered a foundation of witchcraft– there's something called the Rede, which tells its practitioners that 'as it harms none, do as you will.' Basically, that means don't do anything that would hurt anybody. Many Wiccans also believe that any energy you put out in the world, good or bad, will be returned to you threefold, meaning that it either comes back around three times or with thrice as much strength."

I moved my finger over, pointing to the drawing of a suspiciously Sebastian-esque head with fangs and horns and an evil expression. This was near another head with Xs for eyes and its tongue sticking out.

"You can certainly see this in practice with most magic workers in this world. They get their power, their magic, by sucking it away from magic creatures. They steal it. And because stealing is wrong, and hurting other creatures is wrong, and doing all that with an eye for profit is wrong, magic creatures tend to hate those with magic, and try to harm and kill them if they can. That's probably why Herr Wolfman entered into the contract with your ancestress: she worked with him, she cooperated with him, she didn't threaten him or try to steal his power or essence from him."

That was a dirty, dirty lie, since as far as I could tell Sieglinde didn't _have_ a magic ancestress, but it jived with her worldview and was also a logical progression of thought with how things worked in the _Black Butler_ universe.

"And that may be why he is attacking the village now?" Sieglinde asked uncertainly, her small hand creeping in to clutch my sleeve. "He is displeased with the presence of a magician who he believes may be here to steal from him?"

"Nah." I answered, patting her hand comfortingly. "I don't steal my magic. I trade for it, freely, or I absorb it from the surrounding environment when no one else wants or is using it. You'd be surprised at how much magic is just lying around."

Sieglinde blinked, but took that at face value.

"More importantly, learning to use your magic like that is wrong and bad. It taints it, and magical creatures, and other magicians, can sense that –which is why I know Herr Wolfman won't target me, because my magic isn't tainted."

This was simplifying a great deal, since in this world, any and every magic creature seemed to be so very used to magicians stealing anything they could get their grabby little hands on that they attacked or avoided any human they sensed with a magical aura they moment they sensed it, regardless of purity. The Grim Reapers I'd met –Grell and Undertaker and Knox and William T. Spears– all instantly recognized the fact I was a magician, as had Sebastian, and none of them had been kindly inclined to me. On the other hand, benevolent creatures like the little fairies I'd summoned for help clearly had _some_ kind of prior experience with good magicians, since they had come willingly to my calls and had obvious protocol for treating a cooperative magician.

But alas, telling Sieglinde all that in detail instead of broad strokes would invite questions, which I would have to answer, which at this point I unfortunately had to avoid doing.

"If you want to do good, for your village and for yourself, you need to keep your magic pure." I explained, and turned the page. "Then again, some magic creatures are so tense around magicians that they'll attack or avoid one on sight, just on suspicion. A good way to avoid that is to specify what you want, and make sure to offer something in a trade –don't just summon, _invite_ , and give whoever or whatever you're inviting something for the trouble. Y'know?"

Sieglinde nodded eagerly, and looked down again as I pointed to a series of drawings on the new page that involved a bubbling beaker, a black cat, a Nordic rune, and a Celtic knot.

"As far as Europe goes, historically, the magic systems have aligned with or mimicked the religious patterns of any given area. For example, here, most of the magicians would practice things in tune with German superstitions and folklore, like the Wild Hunt or Nordic mythology. And of course there's witchcraft –Wicca, pagan religions, whatever you like to call it. Lot of those around here."

I pointed to the beaker.

"Another German-esque thing is alchemy, though that's a big one all over Europe. Like witches, alchemists work with herbs and chemical compounds and things –the words _chemist_ and _chemical_ actually come from alchemist and alchemical– but alchemists are more focused on purifying all matter from its base form into its noble form, most famously turning lead into gold. They believe lead is the lowest and coarsest of the metals, see, so if you can successfully purify it into gold, you've achieved the perfect synthesis of matter. The legendary Philosopher's Stone is what they believe facilitates this process, because the alchemist making it successfully completed their _magnum opus_ , their Great Work, a process both spiritual and physical as they worked to distill what would eventually become their Philosopher's Stone inside a specially sealed chamber like an egg –when something is hermetically sealed, that's where that phrase came from, because Hermeticism describes the spiritual following of alchemy and the Thrice-Greatest Hermes, who is said to have written the Hermetica, also known as the _Corpus Hermeticum_ , and the most famous part, the Emerald Tablet."

Sieglinde blinked and tilted her head.

"The Emerald Tablet?"

I nodded, and picked up my journal, flipping back to the furious notes I'd taken when Britain was explaining this to me, way back in the first third of my notebook.

"It's a sacred text in Hermeticism." I explained, still searching for the proper pages. "Well, the whole Hermetica is. The Emerald Tablet is an especially important part, because it allegedly contains the secret of the _prima materia_ and how its transmutation works: in other words, how to make a Philosopher's Stone of your own. Uh, here we go."

I spread my fingers a little more to hold the pages open and flat and read aloud.

" _'In truth, without deceit, certain and most veritable  
That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above,  
and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below,  
to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing.  
And just as all things have come from this One Thing,  
through the meditation of One Mind, so do all created things originate from this One Thing,  
through Transformation.  
Its farther is the Sun, its mother the Moon. The Wind carries it in its belly,  
its nurse is the Earth. It is the origin of All, the consecration of the Universe;  
its inherent Strength is perfected, if it is turned into Earth.  
Separate the Earth from Fire, the Subtle from the Gross, gently and with great Ingenuity.  
It rises from Earth to Heaven and descends again to Earth,  
thereby combining within Itself the powers of both the Above and Below.  
Thus will you obtain the Glory of the whole Universe.  
All Obscurity will be clear to you. This is the greatest Force of all powers,  
because it overcomes every Subtle thing and penetrates every Solid thing.  
In this way was the Universe created.  
From this comes many wonderous Applications, because this is the Patterns.  
Therefore I am called Thrice Greatest Hermes, having all three parts of the wisdom of the Whole Universe.  
Herein have I completely explained the operation of the Sun.'_"

"Hmm…" Sieglinde hummed, putting a hand to her chin as her eyebrows furrowed thoughtfully, contemplating those words. I began to flip back to where we were, and paused and looked at her attentively as I reached that page.

"I don't get it." Sieglinde finally said blankly, lowering her hand, and I shrugged.

"Me neither. But we're both not alchemists, so…does it matter?"

"I don't like not knowing things!" Sieglinde said with a petulant scowl as she threw both hands in the air, before flailing angrily. "Grrrgh! It sounds so stupidly simple but so ridiculously complex at the same time! Read it to me again!"

I sweatdropped. This business of distracting her with philosophy was working a little _too_ well…

"Eh, it's talking about the _prima materia_ , the first matter. 'All things from one' –alchemists believe that the world was formed out of the _prima materia_ , and its still a lattice around which the world and everything in it exists. 'Its father is the sun, mother the moon' –the sun is generally considered a masculine energy source, the moon female, and the duality of the genders is very important in alchemy. Their perfect being, a child of the Red King and White Queen and one of the metaphysical steppingstones to creating a Philosopher's Stone, is the "Philosopher's Child" of alchemy, a hermaphrodite. Y'know, someone with both male and female sexes. 'The wind carries it in its belly' –that's gestation, and one of the four elements. Earth, Fire, all the elements, and of course separating the subtle, the nobler, purer parts from the gross, that's the distillation and transformation that's so important in alchemy. I'm pretty sure the rest of it is talking about your reward for successfully creating the Stone and crediting Hermes Trismegistus, who wrote it. The bit at the end, the 'operation of the sun,' that's a reference to the completed Stone itself, which is often referenced as a red sun."

I swallowed and rubbed my throat, which felt a little dry. This was the longest I'd talked in a while, but Sieglinde was almost literally hanging on every word, scooched as close to me as she could physically manage and looking up with shining eyes. Obviously, she was more than a little excited to be hearing about magic and all these other complex ideas, which I suppose only made sense. Whatever else she may be, Sieglinde was a qualified genius, boundlessly intelligent, and her intelligence had to have been stifled at least a little by having all the same people around her all the time, all of whom were trying to get her to focus on one thing and one thing alone, and actually deliberating distracting her from, or not mentioning, any other ideas or lines of thought.

No wonder she was starving for intellectual stimulation, even when _I_ was deliberately cutting out parts of this stuff myself, too.

"I see…" Sieglinde said, rubbing her chin more thoughtfully. "This is what you mean by keeping my magic pure, yes? Alchemy seems to rely heavily on the symbolism of creation in both the cosmic and the physical sense: the alchemist is the parent of their work, and their work is simultaneously in the forge and crucible. A tainted parent gives birth to a child with defects, and tainted material in the forge corrupts the whole work."

"Yes!" I punched the air excitedly. "That's it, exactly!"

"And our witches' philosophy agrees to the same thing," Sieglinde continued proudly, excitement dancing in her eyes as she leaned forward in her chair to beam at my journal. "-that corrupted and negative energy has a sickening effect on both the witch and the world around her. This is amazing! Wolf!"

Her manservant jolted, clearly having been lost long ago with all my long-winded technical English, and then frowned as Sieglinde leaned forward to hug me around the waist, shaking me excitedly as best she could.

_"We absolutely must keep Fräulein Arya with us when the others leave! She's a fellow witch just like me, not an outsider! She belongs in Wolfssclucht! I can learn so much from her, and perfect the ultimate magic so much sooner! Pleeeease?!"_

She turned the fearsome power of the most adorable puppy eyes I had ever seen in my life upon him, and Wolfram flinched and looked away.

"Urk!"

He swallowed hard before continuing, still not looking at her. _"M-my lady, that's not…exactly…"_

_"She still doesn't count?! Fine! Arya can marry you, and then she's definitely a member of Wolfssclucht!"_

_"WHAAAAT?!"_ Wolfram and I cried at the same time.

Sieglinde looked up at me from her place clinging to my waist like an adorable sloth, pouting, as though she had suggested something utterly reasonable and we were the weird ones for finding it shocking. "Is Wolfram not handsome enough for you? I can assure you that he is very well-built!" She removed one arm to point excitedly at her manservant. _"Wolf! Take off your garments this instant! Show Fräulein Arya what she will be getting out of this bargain! You and her can share a steamy night of passion and then she'll be able to stay here forever and I can have a wonderful teacher!"_

"I feel as though you're forgetting a couple of the steps of courtship." I deadpanned, gently starting to remove her arms from my waist. "And I really think someone your age shouldn't be thinking about sex…or so aware of it in the first place."

"Why?" Sieglinde asked with all the bright-eyed innocence of her age, looking up at me as she obediently let go and sat back, and I winced.

"Its…complicated. Er, Wolfram and I don't know each other at all, hardly, and we aren't attracted to her, so us…having congress, would be a very odd and uncomfortable thing."

"Because you're a virgin?"

My eye twitched. _Lord, give me strength._

 _"Because having sex with someone is a huge milestone in a relationship, and spontaneously having sex with someone you just met is not what real people do."_ I said, enunciating carefully and speaking German, just to make sure the message got across. _"Having sex means exposing all your vulnerabilities to someone and sharing a part of yourself with them, and that isn't something you do with strangers."_

 _Unless you're drunk, horny, and confident._ I added silently.

 _"Sieglinde, you're too young to understand all the complex implications and factors regarding sex, so you shouldn't be thinking of it, because you don't have the life experience or social mastery to understand what sex truly means, and won't for another five years at least."_ I finished, watching her sigh, but nod in understanding. "What, I mean, how, did you learn about it anyways?"

"Hilde has books." Sieglinde admitted cheerfully. "She looked so dreadfully unlike herself reading them, I borrowed a few ages ago."

I faceplanted onto the table.

Dear god, Sieglinde had learned about sex through some variety of porn. German porn. Adult, German porn. Would the fact it was Victorian make it any less graphic?

Well, this did explain how she had such a dirty mind and unexpectedly acute grasp of what innuendos worked when. She was too young to fully understand the implications, but old and clever enough to understand the situations and the supposed benefits of them.

"Wolfram," I said into the table. _"Did you know Sieglinde swiped some pornography books from that lady Hilde and read them, and that's why she makes these kinds of jokes?"_

_"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!"_

Judging by his thunderous bellow, I didn't think so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: June 8th, 2020, 8.47 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: June 8th, 2020, 8.41 PM USA Central Time


	62. That Butler, Brilliant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic now has fanart~! The first (only?) fanart of this series to date, actually. A link for you:
> 
> https://iliveonmylaptop.tumblr.com/post/620482558401167360/doodles-for-one-of-my-favorite-fanfics-the-teacher
> 
> And I'm also clawing my way to the finish, everybody. I've decided that there's going to be 66 chapters total, because that's thematically appropriate and whatnot. 666 is the devil's number and all that, and there's certainly no way in hell (hehe) that I'm going to add a further 600 chapters to this five-year fic. The next one's going to be long enough.
> 
> Speaking of length, this fic is almost certainly going to end up being twice as long as the first one of this series, despite having less chapters. Last fic had 166,093 words in the story, so double that will be 332,186, and I've already hit 300,000. 
> 
> Let's see if my prosy ass can hit double.

_Arya's POV:_

Sieglinde and I spent most of the day going over various European magic traditions and philosophies, and it didn't take much nudging on my end for her to explain almost everything she could about the wolfman and her ancestral contract with him, and how her own magic worked. Like I'd theorized, much of it was science and chemistry gussied up to look supernatural –something that could only have been a by-product of all the people in Sieglinde's sphere of knowledge working exceptionally hard to keep her from discovering what chemical reactions and science actually were. Wolfram was exceptionally reluctant to let Sieglinde show me one of her textbooks, for example, but eventually begrudgingly gave over, and I raised an eyebrow as Sieglinde babbled and excitedly showed me the Theban alphabet arranged therein and all the things those so-called spells denoted. I was more than a bit rusty on my Theban, since Britain had skimmed over it when teaching me about magic alphabets, but this was a textbook for a child, even a preternaturally advanced one, and I could definitely recognize individual letters when they spelled out things like "H2O" on the page for water and "S8" for sulfur.

So that was something to tell Sebastian.

We ate lunch together in Sieglinde's room, talking around mouthfuls as we both pointed out things on our respective pages, but Sieglinde ordered me and Wolfram down to the dining room for tea and a break while she went to check on Ciel.

All the servants had gathered with us by the time she returned, and I was caught in the midst of whispering together with Mey-rin about our stay in the castle thus far, which she found delightfully spooky, although she was a bit peeved about Sebastian's apparent carelessness in tending to Ciel.

"Ciel's wounds are healing fast." Sieglinde explained in English as she nursed her final cup of tea. "He's very unstable emotionally, but he seems to have suffered no memory loss.

"W-will his eyes heal, will they?" Mey-rin asked nervously, flustering.

"His eyes themselves are unhurt. He must have temporarily lost his vision due to mental trauma." Sieglinde told her. "He should be able to see again when his psychological and other physical wounds are all better."

The servants all collapsed with a collective huge sigh.

"What a relief!"

Sieglinde smirked a little. "On any case, he should eat well and get plenty of rest. Then he'll be ready to get out of bed soon."

"That right?" Bardroy said, perking up. "Then let's get back to the manor as soon as the young master's all recovered. He'll feel more secure back home."

"Y-yes, that would be best…" Sieglinde agreed weakly, her eyes lowering to the table as a downcast expression appeared on her face. The other servants, however, failed to notice, too busy being caught up in their plans to help Ciel.

"Then I gotta make him eat the chef's special dinner so he can build up his strength! He's gotta eat meat! Meat!" Bardroy said firmly, and Mey-rin beamed, nodding rapidly.

"You're right! Right you are!"

"I'll take him some sweets!" Finny agreed.

"Let's bake some scones –says Emily."

Sebastian sighed. "Try not to make more work for me by doing unnecessary things."

 _"Meat dishes take time to prepare, so…lend me a hand, won't you?"_ Wolfram asked reluctantly, and Sebastian cast a glance at Sieglinde.

_"But…"_

She grinned and lifted up the medical book Sebastian had given her.

_"I'll be reading this, so don't worry about me! I'm looking forward to dinner!"_

Sebastian bowed his head in acknowledgement. _"Very well, my lady."_

I went down to the kitchen with the others and rolled up my sleeves, helping Mey-rin set up dishes and fetching various ingredients and tools for the others. This wasn't exactly all that helpful, but it did enable me to casually lean past Sebastian and set down some spoons on the counter by his soup pan.

"Sieglinde has chemical formulas in Theban in her witch textbooks." I said in a carefully low, nonchalant voice, the same way I would say 'Here are your spoons.'

"I see." Sebastian murmured in the same tone, as though he were thanking me for said spoons. I bustled off, helping Mey-rin arrange some dishes on a cart, getting Snake a potato-peeler, opening a cupboard and handing some measuring weights off to Wolfram, and looping back to Mey-rin to help her go up and set the table.

"She thinks she's perfecting a spell to feed the wolfman miasma." I said as I walked past Sebastian, and caught his eyes flicking over to me as he gave a slight nod, disguised by tasting his latest concoction.

Mey-rin and I went up to the dining table, laying out the candles and candelabras and lighting them to combat the falling darkness outside, and I looked mournfully out of the window and wished I had my phone on a charger, so that I could whip it out and snap a photo of the picturesque mountain sunset through the castle windows. But alas, such was impossible, and we were left to carefully arrange plates and bundles of cutlery in preparation for the actual event of dinner, moving around a very absorbed Sieglinde, who barely paid attention to us as she keenly perused the medical textbook. The only acknowledgement we got was a half-smile and a brief shuffling scoot as we lit the candles, shifting herself to take better advantage of the light.

Dinner preparations had continued in our absence, with the noticeable change of an oddly guilty-looking Snake and a not-at-all guilty Sebastian being glared at by a very-angry-looking Wolfram, which led me to believe Sebastian had done some poking of his own while Mey-rin and I were upstairs, and had dragged Snake along for the ride. This glaring mood continued all throughout dinner, with Wolfram watching Sebastian like, well, a wolf, hackles all but raised and teeth definitely bared, though Wolfram was human enough and his teeth weren't sharp enough to make this anything but awkward.

I was glad enough to escape afterwards, and so were Bardroy and Mey-rin, with a reluctant Snake and Tanaka being dragooned into dish-duty. Sebastian didn't seem phased one way or the other, but he did lead the way out of the room, though that didn't seem to do much to shake off Wolfram, who returned to shadowing us almost immediately after taking Sieglinde up to her bedchamber. Too bad for him, since we were just talking casually amongst ourselves and heading back to our respective quarters for the night.

Me, I planned on going to bed and fiddling with my stupid battery runes, trying to figure out what I was missing, and maybe swiping a normal book off of Snake, if he didn't go into a dead faint at the idea of a woman coming to his quarters after dinner. Mey-rin was talking about how she wanted to make sure Finny got some rest of his own, since he was stuck with babysitting duty, trying to get Ciel to eat some of the meat and sweets we had cooked up for him.

I perked up attentively as I heard a distant _crash_ somewhere in the castle, and watched Sebastian's shoulders stiffen up ahead. Immediately, without a word to the rest of us, he started running for Ciel's room, and realizing the significance of the crash –since there very probably wasn't anyone in the castle but us and Sieglinde, and nothing here would ever work to harm or attack her– Mey-rin and I picked up our skirts and ran after him as Bardroy followed on our heels, and Wolfram belatedly ran after the lot of us.

It was a sad fact that both of our skirts were voluminous enough that we could only hoist them so high without fear of the bunched fabric hampering our steps –not to mention we both also had to negotiate the complex straps holding our guns up underneath our skirts, holsters which in my case were also threaded through my clothing– so Mey-rin and I fell slightly behind as Bardroy sprinted with a surprising turn of speed and Wolfram ran even faster, though Sebastian, of course, outpaced us all as he raced up the steps towards Ciel's hallway.

There was a loud, almost hollow-sounding _thud_ from up ahead, and then the echo of a thunderous growl and hair-raising skitter of something clawlike scraping over stone, along with a large body.

"What's the matter!?" Sebastian called, pulling even farther ahead of the rest of us as his legs almost blurred, and I heard a door slam up ahead as he outpaced us to the point of getting out of sight. "What's going on?!"

Wolfram lunged through the open door, then Bardroy, then Mey-rin and me, dropping our skirts back down to our ankles as Bardroy bent over, the room now empty of anything antagonistic, though Finny was draped protectively over a cowering Ciel on the bed, and the back of Finny's lacerated, bloody clothes told us that whatever had happened, it certainly hadn't been an accident.

"The wolfman attacked us…" Finny gasped, pulling himself up a little a Sebastian rushed towards the bed.

"What?!"

"It escaped through that window!" he said urgently, pointing, and Bardroy and I both immediately went for our guns, him diving his hand into his breast and me diving mine into my skirts.

"All right! I'll capture it!" Bardroy shouted, and Wolfram stepped forward to stop us as we dashed towards the shattered window.

_"Stop! The wolfman is cloaked in miasma! You'll be cursed too!"_

"Hunh? What the hell are you saying!?" Bardroy snapped.

"He is correct." Sebastian said reluctantly as he hovered over Ciel and Finny. "Cease your chase, Bardroy."

 _"Wh-what's happened?!"_ Sieglinde gasped from the doorway, making us look over to see her hitched up to her Hexenballon contraption.

 _"My lady!"_ Wolfram exclaimed, rushing over. _"Herr Wolfman attacked them!"_

_"Here, in the Emerald Castle?!"_

"Uuu…make it stop! I'm frightened!" Ciel whimpered, clutching onto Finny, who flustered nervously over him.

"Young master! There, there, you don't need to be scared anymore…"

Sieglinde saw this and gritted her teeth. _"Wolfram. Prepare for the Emerald Witch's duty!"_

 _"Ja."_ he answered, hand over his chest.

 _"Lady Sullivan?"_ Sebastian asked, and she narrowed her eyes.

_"Don't worry. I'm the Emerald Witch. I shall protect this village without fail!"_

As Sieglinde and Wolfram bustled out and everyone else crowded around Ciel and Finny, with Sebastian curtly ordering Bardroy to go fetch Snake, Tanaka, and a first-aid kit, I slowly approached the window, my feet crunching slightly on the glass shards inside the room. Cautiously stepping out onto the balcony, I first glanced up, and seeing nothing poised above me and ready to pounce, I leaned farther out, looking from side to side, before fully committing and stepping all the way out into the open, easing my gun out of its holster and holding it down by my side. If a so-called wolfman popped out here and now to attack me, or anyone else, he was getting a bullet between the eyes and no mistake.

Peering over the balcony, I winced, while at the same time raising both eyebrows. That was definitely a doozy of a drop, so if the wolfman had jumped from here, his cohorts were probably dragging what was left away to get his legs splinted…or just plain scraping him up off the grass. Depended on how he'd landed.

More likely, whoever had come in here with the intent to silence or scare away Ciel had swung down somehow, probably to one of the other balconies or the wall itself, since this castle wasn't exactly sheer-sided and there were plenty of gaps between the stone blocks to use as hand and footholds.

I shivered slightly, even as a warm breeze eased itself across the sultry summer air. With the window-doors busted open like this –not like they had ever been much of a deterrent to begin with– Ciel's room was now decidedly vulnerable, and I made a note to slap some wards up before I went to get some sleep.

Returning to the room, I saw that Sebastian had gotten Finny into a chair and was busy dressing his wounds as the others hovered over Ciel, who was wrapped up in one of the spangled curtains that could be drawn around the bed, trying to soothe him.

"Y-young master, please c'mon out, okay?" Bardroy tried, smiling as brightly as he could.

"You still need to rest, you do!" Mey-rin urged him, as Snake nodded silently beside them both.

"I hate this place!" Ciel wailed from inside his blanket-cocoon. "I want to go home!"

"C-calm down, Smile! –says Goethe." Snake tried, sweating nervously.

"Shut up!"

Finny kept twisting around, trying to look, as Sebastian wound bandages around his torso, and at long last the butler finished with a sigh, letting him bolt up and go reassure Ciel with the others, to equally negligible effect.

"I'm going home! Now!" Ciel cried, and I noted the increasingly irked expression on Sebastian's face as he briskly snapped the medical box shut.

"Well, then. Now what?" he grumbled to himself.

This was the expression and the attitude he continued to wear as we slowly, slowly coaxed Ciel back to bed, eyebrows furrowed with irritation, barely twitching, and seemingly holding himself back from some expression of violence by only the merest thread of his considerable will.

"W-we finally managed to get him back in bed, we did." Mey-rin gasped when we all piled out of the room, the door shutting behind us, as Sebastian scowled subtly to himself.

"What do we gotta do to get the young master back to normal?" Bardroy groaned in agreement.

"An eye for an eye, as they say. Perhaps we should try shocking him out of it again?" Sebastian suggested wearily.

"Cease, I pray you." Tanaka told him firmly. "The best medicine for that which ails the heart and mind is rest. I am certain the young master is experiencing emotional turmoil. In times like this, we must not succumb to panic or impatience…we must simply watch over him."

Sebastian looked visibly disappointed, and still tangibly annoyed.

"So what the hell is this "miasma" that's made _our_ young master act like that?" Bardroy asked tersely, folding his arms. "I ain't so good with that occult stuff…magic power and all that doesn't really click with me."

Before we could respond to that, brisk footsteps announced Wolfram and Sieglinde's presence.

 _"Hey."_ he said curtly, addressing us as a whole. _"We're heading to the village assembly to discuss the case of Herr Wolfman."_

Sieglinde looked decidedly downcast, though whether it was because of this or something else, I wasn't entirely aware.

 _"Don't get up to anything funny while we're gone."_ Wolfram added as he pushed past Sebastian, who tracked the duo with his eyes, but said nothing, not even to us, not even after Wolfram and Sieglinde had gone out of sight.

"Helloooo, Sebastian?" Bardroy asked after several minutes had passed, and Sebastian heaved another sigh.

"All that has happened this time around puts this case well outside my purview, so…perhaps it is best to continue to wait and see for a little while yet." he said with obvious reluctance.

The others nodded reluctantly and turned to leave, and I made to follow with them, before Sebastian snagged my shoulder and stopped me.

"A word with you, if I may."

I sighed and turned back around, and we waited until the others were out of earshot before Sebastian spoke again, his voice pained.

"I prepare myself for disappointment even as I ask, but I don't suppose you can heal the young master's mind with magic?" he asked hopefully.

"You wanna take the risk I leave him a drooling husk?" I asked, folding my arms and raising an eyebrow. "'Cause I can do it then, but not before."

I lifted one hand to spin a finger around my ear.

"Mind-magic's a tricky thing, dude. Erasing memories or implanting suggestions like I did before is okay-ish, because that targets one small specific thing or is just a sort've gentle push towards thinking something, but rooting around looking for something like, say, overwhelming fear, or a general sense of self and personality? You so much as _twitch_ wrong and you crack the whole egg."

"I assume the brain is the yolk in that dreadful metaphor."

"Yup." I lowered my hand and sighed. "And I'm trying to do operations with a can-opener. Like, it _is_ possible, but certainly not at my level, and not without a certain amount of care and skill."

Sebastian's eyes rolled heavenwards in a brief display of genuine feeling, in this case exasperation.

"You are _useless_."

"I'm an apprentice!" I barked at him, flapping my arms angrily. "A-pren-tice! Remember that part?! Practically everything is beyond my level! I wasn't even a _real_ apprentice, my teacher just taught me _some_ stuff as a side while he was going through his shit to find the right spell to send me home! Y'all are asking me to do graduated doctorate shit when I'm still in high school! _High school_! I! Can't! Do! What! You're! Asking! For! Get that through your head already!"

Sebastian rolled his eyes again, holding me off with a hand on my forehead as I flailed at him angrily.

"And yet you've spent over nine months attempting to learn about magic, and _apparently_ not made a single inch of progress." he drawled, and I swiped at his eyes with my fingers crooked, not even managing to get to his face. Stupid bastard with his long arm reach.

"I'm learning how to represent everything in this world in a single sigil, you piece of shit! You think I've got time to learn spells?!"

"You certainly excel at wasting any time available to you."

I hated him. I hated him so much. If I could get away with it, I was gonna dump holy water in every single ingredient on the Phantomhive estate right before I left this world. Hell, I was going to replace the whole damn water table with it! Sebastian was going to have his feet sizzle just from walking around! I was gonna get a priest to bless every single cloud in Britain, just to make him suffer when it rained!

Back in the real world, Snake ran up to us as I was busy trying to get around a smirking Sebastian's guard, occasionally lunging at him only for the demon to carelessly palm my forehead again and shove me away. I suppose I should be grateful he didn't crush my skull entirely, which was certainly an improvement to the beginning of our relationship. I had no illusions about what would have happened to me if I'd attacked Sebastian before now, even jokingly.

"Black! Aryana!" Snake called. "Oscar's back, says Goethe."

"Well done, sneaking in there." Sebastian said as he stepped away from me, and we both turned to face Snake. "So how did it go?"

"Have I got the scoop of the century for you, old boy! –says Oscar." Snake told us as the snake on his shoulder hissed excitedly.

Holding up a hand to silence him, Sebastian looked around warily, then beckoned us both. Gathering up the other servants, Sebastian led us down to the kitchen, where Snake delivered his news and wrangled a dead mouse out of one of the traps around the edge of the kitchen, feeding it to Oscar in reward as the others spluttered.

"Huh?!"

"There are wolfmen in the bowels of this castle!?"

"Th-then Lady Sullivan's in league with the wolfman?!"

"That lil' lass was doin' something surrounded by a whole passel of wolfmen! –says Oscar." Snake explained, and Bardroy stumbled forward.

"What kinda something are we talkin' about here…?"

Snake blinked and looked at Oscar, coiled atop a stool, as the snake hissed. "What kind? …This and that! –Oscar replies."

"W-well, guess that's the best I'm gonna get out of a snake…" Bardroy sweatdropped.

Snake frowned as his voice altered again. "How dare you! We remember everything right up through yesterday, thanks very much –says Wordsworth!"

"But the look of sheer panic on Lady Sullivan's face when the young master was attacked…I can't believe that was an act." Mey-rin said, earning a grateful smile from me. "I just can't."

"She was also shaken when a villager was harmed. The wolfmen's attacks seem to be against her wishes thus far." Sebastian noted, hand to his chin.

"Er…why don't we take a peek in the cellar while we got the chance?" Bardroy suggested, shrugging. "No one's home now and all…"

Sebastian shook his head. "When I opened the hidden door earlier, there was a talisman-like object in the entrance. It must have something like magic cast upon it to alert the residents to the presence of intruders."

"So that's why he rushed over back then, Wordsworth realizes." Snake hummed, clearly casting his own memory back to when he and Sebastian had apparently snuck down to the bowels of the castle and found a secret door.

"Well, tricks or no, it matters not to me." Sebastian said, popping open his watch and glancing at the time, before tucking it back into his breast pocket and waving at us. "You lot, if Herr Wolfram returns, can I count on you to buy me some time?"

"Wh-what do you plan to do, what?" Mey-rin asked curiously, and Sebastian smirked a little.

"I am the butler of the Phantomhive family. It goes without saying that I can infiltrate a room and not be found out."

It was my turn to roll my eyes as Sebastian went out, and I settled in with the others to anxiously await his return.

_***Time Skip***_

_"We're back."_ Wolfram called, making us all jump guiltily, me and Snake having been involved in a less competitive talk than usual as we discussed German literature at the table he was making buns at and Bardroy and Mey-rin pacing the room nervously.

 _"We obtained provisions for tomorrow…"_ Wolfram added as he walked into the room with the buxom Anne, both of them holding large baskets full of produce. _"Where is the butler?"_

"Um…" Mey-rin and Bardroy stuttered in unison, Bardroy rubbing the back of his head.

"Wait a minute! How's he expect us to stall for time when we can't understand a word this guy's sayin'?!" Bardroy squawked.

"If only Finny were here! Then we'd at least be able to understand him a little, we would!" Mey-rin whimpered.

"I think not understanding him is the point of delay." I said without looking up, scooping a ball of dough out of the bowl nearby and handing to Snake for him to mold it.

"Yes! Miss Arya! You speak German, tell us what he wants of us!"

"He's, er-"

 _"I'm asking where your butler's got to!"_ Wolfram snapped irritably, looking at me, and I flustered, unsure of who to translate for first.

"Uh, um, well, you see, he wants-"

I yelped as something suddenly slithered over my shoulders, whipping my head over to where it had been going in shock as Anne shrieked and dropped her basket, seeing one of Snake's snakes coiling over her, apparently having used me as a bridge between her and Snake.

Looking back over, this was very clearly _not_ something Snake had told it to do, since his face was frozen and pale with horror and mouth gaping in shock, along with everyone else.

_"Ah! No, sto-"_

A frightened squeak ruthlessly drew my eyes back to Anne, and I saw her standing stiff, arms upraised and clearly barely able to keep herself from trying to drag the potentially poisonous creature away, as whatever snake it was dove headfirst into her bosom.

"N-no!"

"Not there!"

We all spluttered in horror as the snake wiggled until it completely disappeared, all uncertain of what to do but very certain that this was very much not okay.

Thankfully, Sebastian showed up, reaching for the woman's skirts.

_"Please hold still. It would be a shame if you were bitten."_

"Eh?!" she gasped, then whimpered and twitched as Sebastian reached in and dragged out the snake responsible for her discomfort. Crisis over, Anne collapsed over his arm, and Sebastian sighed as he held the snake in the air with his free hand.

 _"Oh dear. Please excuse our servant's grave discourtesy."_ he said, making Wolfram scoff. The snake in Sebastian's hand hissed and squirmed, and Sebastian turned away. _"I think it would be best if Oscar cooled his head outside._ Come with me, Snake, Miss Thompson."

We both moved to follow him, Snake scooping up his suit jacket, only to stop as Wolfram spoke up.

_"The lot of you are to begone from this village on the morrow. We cannot afford to stoke the fires of Herr Wolfman's rage any further."_

_"…as you wish."_ Sebastian agreed, and we followed him outside, where another snake immediately poked out of Snake's clothing and began to hiss furiously at Oscar.

"Ugggh, Oscar, you letch! –says Emily!" Snake translated, and Oscar hissed in return from Sebastian's hands, making Snake blink. "Eh?"

I looked at him, Sebastian looked at Oscar as he coiled around one arm, and Snake hastily translated for us.

"Its not like I coiled around her to shove my face in her bosom and feel her up! I did it to sniff her! –says Oscar. And boy, have I got another big scoop for you! That woman! She smelled like the wolfman –he says theatrically!"

"Hohh." Sebastian breathed. "Then I think I understand what is-"

"Please pardon my interruption."

We all whipped around as there was a crackle in the nearby undergrowth, only to deadpan as we saw a white horse pushing its way through.

"Do excuse me." that same voice continued as a man all in white and with riding spurs and goggles stepped through the last of the bushes onto the lawn beside the horse, holding up an envelope sealed with red wax. "I have come to deliver a letter from Her Majesty, the Queen."

"…who the heck are you?" I said after a moment, and caught Sebastian's exasperated sigh.

"This is the Queen's master of the horse, John Brown."

_Ahhh…so that's why I've never heard of him._

"It must have been a long journey, Mister Brown. Your efforts are appreciated." he continued, addressing the man directly. "Did you travel on horseback?"

"Never!" John Brown gasped, stroking his horse's neck as it began to chew on his hair. "Yes, yes, there's a good lad. I wouldn't force my favorite equine to tread on such a rough road."

"…is that so?" Sebastian asked after a moment, Oscar hissing wildly at the other man. "I am glad to see you both unaffected by the wolfman's miasma."

"Cheers." John Brown said carelessly, stepping forward. "By the way, where is the earl?"

Sebastian forced a smile. "I am terribly sorry. The master has fallen ill and is convalescing at present. Please allow me to accept that letter on his behalf."

"Most unfortunate." John Brown noted, looking down at said letter. " _'It's a matter of great urgency, so read it right away!'_ is the verbal message I was instructed to pass along with it."

He sighed and looked up once more.

"I have no choice. Let's try this again. Might you examine the contents of the letter, Mister Butler?"

"Me?" Sebastian asked with a tilt of his eyebrows, and John Brown implacably shoved it at him.

"The letter demands immediate attention."

"In that case, forgive me." Sebastian said with perfectly measured reluctance, accepting it and popping the seal. I leaned over his shoulder to try and see what the letter was, only for Sebastian to raise his free hand –still with Oscar twined around his wrist– and carelessly shove me away, palming my face and pushing me almost off balance without even looking away from the papers he was unfolding. Oscar apparently decided he liked me better than the demon and slid off Sebastian's wrist to coil around my head like a bizarre tiara as Sebastian pulled away, and I scowled, gingerly reaching up to offer an arm to pass Oscar along to Snake as Sebastian scanned over the letter.

"Intriguing." he murmured, and John Brown waved at us as he moved back towards his horse.

"Well, I've seen the delivery of the letter through. So if you'll excuse me."

"Beware the wolfman on your return journey." Sebastian smirked as he refolded the letter –the bastard– and Emily hissed at John Brown from her place on Snake's shoulder.

"Cheers. Do take care of the earl." John Brown told us after a pause, before leading the horse off.

"So," I began as Oscar slithered from me to Snake, addressing Sebastian. "Chemical weapons?"

"Mustard gas." he agreed. "Evidently, Lady Sullivan is being manipulated to create a potent form of it under the guise of magical miasma."

"How horrible! –Emily exclaims." Snake said, his face shadowing with sympathy. "We surely aren't going to leave her? –she asks."

"Surely not." Sebastian deadpanned.

"You'd have to pry me away from helping her with a crowbar." I said firmly, folding my arms. Snake nodded to me, and we both smiled in understanding of our mutual empathy.

"Well, in any case, the time for a leisurely approach has finally passed." Sebastian said with muted satisfaction, before turning to look up at the castle. "The young master needs to be informed of how things have progressed, and we simply cannot afford to allow him to loll about in bed a moment longer."

Snake and I exchanged another glance, this time uncomfortable.

"Smile needs more time to recover-" Snake began tentatively, only for Sebastian to cut him off.

"That is immaterial. Rest assured; I shall find a way to hasten his recovery. For now, the two of you should return to the castle, as our absence will likely soon draw suspicion."

We looked at each other again, before Snake shrugged and turned to head back in, and hesitantly, I began to head after him, only to pause after a few steps. If I remembered correctly, Sebastian was going to try and break Ciel out of his funk by attempting to consume his soul, although "only in 90% earnest," and even though it had ended alright in the manga, well…I wasn't 100% on that remaining constant _now_.

"Uh, Sebastian," I said, turning around and nervously tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. "What exactly are you, um, going to try to do?"

He narrowed his eyes at me, but said nothing for a moment. Then Sebastian sighed, shaking his head a little, and started walking, passing me without a thought.

I frowned and turned to follow him. "Hey-!"

The rest of my sentence was rather hastily choked off as Sebastian whipped around, hand striking like a snake as it clamped down on my face, the spread of his fingers broad enough to clamp my jaw shut and muffle any alarmed noises I was about to make.

"I think you know very well what I am about to attempt." Sebastian said with icy correctness, looking down at me as his eyes shimmered over red, pupils slitted like a cat's. "The young master seems content to do nothing but throw tantrums more befitting a mewling babe, therefore, he does not intend to move forward. That is a breach of contract."

I made a muffled, panicked noise, my feet kicking, as Sebastian lifted me by the grip on my face and jaw, frantically clutching his wrist as magic crackled and danced around my fingers, trying to make him let go. But the yellow glow merely left me, eaten away into the void of his body, as my heartbeat continued to climb, pulse roaring in my ears.

"Incompetent as you are, you are still a magician." Sebastian continued sibilantly. "You know very well what happens when a demonic contract is broken."

Well, I certainly had an idea. Demons rarely if ever were the ones to do so, since a lot of their magic was innately tied up in any contract they made: it was sort of like downloading and then operating on a program they themselves had coded. Oh, sure, they _could_ , but it was actually a lot harder than you'd think, combined with the fact that no demon would ever _want_ to, since that involved losing out a meal. Hence, demons pretty much never did, because breaking the terms of the contract themselves immediately severed the tie between themselves and their would-be food.

If the human was the one to break the terms of contract, on the other hand, they got eaten, since _clearly_ , the human in question no longer had any use for the terms they themselves put forth, and therefore the contract was all but done anyways, and merely lacked the formality of the demon devouring their soul and the pesky detail of them possibly not even having completed the terms to begin with.

The demon was the seller in a buyer's market. If they broke the deal, they merely took their goods away. If the _human_ broke the deal, they were cheating the merchant, which resulted in a punishment.

Hardly fair, but then again, nothing demonic in origin had ever claimed to be _fair_.

I whined in pain as Sebastian tightened his grip, fingers digging into the edges of my cheeks like iron and almost certainly causing bruises.

"And you will not interfere." Sebastian continued, his form starting to dissolve into inky strands of darkness that crept around my clawing fingers, tugging at them like they were trying to absorb me into his central mass. **_"Will you?"_ ******

********

"Mm-mm!" I managed to grunt frantically, now well and truly panicking, and gasped as he let go, bouncing onto the ground on my back.

********

"Holy shit." I gasped up at the stars, then jerked up and scuttled backwards as what was nominally supposed to be Sebastian stepped towards me. "I won't interfere! Ciel –Ciel'll be fine without me, he's going to wake up, you'll see!"

********

This was true enough, I hoped, and my mind raced as I frantically thought of what would happen if it somehow _wasn't_ true. I had enough magic to get everyone out of here, right? Sebastian would probably vanish on the spot after consuming Ciel, but could I somehow gather and get the others out of here without him? Could I get _Sieglinde_? Ciel would be fine, he had to be fine, but if he didn't snap to in time there was literally nothing I could do to help him, and there were other people here that were straight fucked if I didn't do something after Ciel and Sebastian vanished.

********

_**"Very well."**_ Sebastian hissed, and was gone.

********

After a shaky moment where I wondered if he was really gone or if he had lingered for some reason, I sighed as I let all my trembling muscles relax, head falling back onto the soft grass as I went limp.

********

"Holy shit." I said to the heavens again, panting hard as my heart continued to pound frantically in my chest, following the ebbing jolts of fear. _That_ was honestly the scariest moment of all my seventeen years, that moment in which I had frantically sent magic into Sebastian and felt it fail, and suddenly realized for real the huge disparity in strength and skill that lay between us, how incredibly fucking easy it would be for him to kill me and how absolutely, hopelessly helpless I was to stop him. Having bullets and magic was a good argument against just about everything, but in those few seconds as I had zapped him and Sebastian hadn't even blinked, my own vulnerability had come crashing down on me again like a wave. Not just me, too: I was used to watching Sebastian do his thing with admiration, or satisfaction when it was enacted to my benefit, but this was the first time I'd truly realized how viscerally terrifying he was as an opponent, even after I had first acknowledged the animosity between him and the magicians of this world.

********

_I think I'm just gonna lay right here for a minute or three and try to get my heartrate down._

********

__

****

********

_***Time Skip***_

********

********  
  


********

When I finally felt like I could get up without shaking in every limb, I heaved myself to my feet, following my memory and the warm candlelight inside the castle as I stumbled back to the kitchen door. The other servants were gathered there, minus Finny, and I exhaled heavily as I all but fell onto the kitchen bench.

********

"Goodness me, Miss Arya, you look as though you've seen a ghost!" Mey-rin said sympathetically, adjusting her glasses, and I let out a half-hysterical laugh.

********

_I wish that's all I'd seen._ I was tempted to say, the words rising in my throat, but I bit it back.

********

"Freaky place they've got here." I managed to say after a moment with a shaky smile, my hands trembling. Apparently the universe had been displeased that I'd missed out on my monthly near-death encounter or something, and I began taking deep breathes to calm myself down as Mey-rin started off, chattering about how very eerie she found the village and how she wasn't at all surprised they had such terrifying stories around here.

********

_Sebastian wouldn't, can't kill anybody without Ciel saying it's okay._ I told myself, trying to rationalize the fear away. _And even if I **did** try to interfere, what could he do to me? Aside from rip me into bloody pieces, I mean…h-he's more concerned with finishing the mission right now, right? Because Ciel's not been transmuted into the delicacy he wants or whatever, he's not actually trying all that hard to eat him, he wants to savor his meal, he's not going to ruin it yet._

********

Looking up at the others as they bustled around the warm kitchen, I felt a pang of returning fear hit me hard and fast. If Sebastian did eat Ciel and fuck off, how were we gonna survive in this obviously hostile castle? What were we gonna say? Maybe I could snatch Sieglinde and cover us long enough to retreat with my magic walls, and we could explain the situation en route, and once we'd gotten somewhere safe I could maybe, maybe explain to the others about what was truly going on between Ciel and Sebastian. Would that work? That'd work, right?

********

Maybe not without proof. But how could I _prove_ I'd known about this, and wouldn't they have expected me to try and stop it?

********

Ngh.

********

_Ciel, if this can somehow reach you, **please** wake up and return to your rational self before Sebastian eats you…_

********

I sighed, rubbing my forehead.

********

Hell of a way to encourage someone I professed to care about, but then again, as squirmy and guilty as it made me feel to admit, Ciel had, apparently, known what he was getting into when he'd sold his soul, ish, and the fact that even with his diabolical cleverness he hadn't even _tried_ to welch out of it to date told me that he was at least slightly okay with the whole idea. It wasn't healthy, not even by the longest long shot, but if this was how Ciel was, this was how Ciel was, and I needed to focus on trying to save the people who wanted and were trying to live. Ciel's fate was out of my hands right now.

********

The sound of running feet clattered down the passageway, and I looked up with all the others as Finny burst in, panting hard.

********

"Young master…Mister Sebastian…" he gasped raggedly, bent over his knees, making the others send him a questioning look.

********

"What is it now, what is it?" Mey-rin asked curiously, and Finny straightened up from where he had been clinging to the doorway, gesturing wildly.

********

"I was watching over the young master before Sebastian came in, and he kicked me out! Said he had something important to tell the young master and that my work was done! Then he just dragged me out and threw me in the corridor!"

********

"EH?!" Bardroy and Mey-rin gasped, as I winced and Snake tilted his head.

********

"What's that on about?" Bardroy wondered aloud, rubbing his chin.

********

"Black appears to have solved the mystery behind the wolfmen and the village, so he must be going to tell Smile about it –says Oscar." Snake told them, nodding wisely.

********

"But why would he kick out Finny?" Mey-rin asked, and Snake wilted.

********

"Erm…"

********

"We definitely need to get to the bottom of this." Mey-rin said, standing up and dusting off her skirt. "Let's all go have a listen-in, let's!"

********

I sweatdropped, but belatedly got to my feet, following the others. "Um, you guys do realize that's maybe not…"

********

"Don't sweat it!" Bardroy laughed, clapping me on the shoulder. "You eavesdrop all the time when you're in service!"

********

I sweatdropped even harder as the others all but dragged me up to the castle bedroom where Ciel was sleeping and/or getting eaten right now. None of them listened to my increasingly weaker arguments, and I was getting steadily more nervous about what would happen if Ciel somehow didn't snap out of things like he was supposed to, and if we were going to hear his death screams or something, and what I would do when all the others inevitably tried to burst in upon hearing them.

********

Luckily, when they did wrangle me up to Ciel's door and anyone who could reach the door pressed their ears against it, nothing seemed to be going on…or at least, nothing that we could directly hear. There were voices talking, but they were low, and the room didn't have the best acoustics, so what was being discussed over by the bed was an absolute mystery to us.

********

On the plus side, no screaming or strangled choking noises, so there was a decent chance Ciel was gonna survive tonight, which was an unmitigated relief.

********

Suddenly, though, the door was yanked open, and everyone cried out in surprise as we fell into the room in a graceless pile, all stacked on top of one another like a failed clown act.

********

"Dear me. Servants stooping to eavesdropping? What is the meaning of this?" Sebastian sighed from above us.

********

"It wasn't my idea!" I said immediately, burying my face in Snake's back and raising my clasped hands above my head as though praying for mercy.

********

"No, but we couldn't hear a thing…er, that's not it…Finny told us you were actin' all weird, sooo…" Bardroy faltered from his place pinned underneath Mey-rin and Snake.

********

"What a hopthead, says Bronte!" Snake scoffed from beneath me.

********

"Mister Sebastian, I can't stand it if you're going to get cross with us! I just can't!" Mey-rin wailed from underneath him.

********

"D'ow-ow-ow! The cuts on my baaack!" Finny cried from the bottom of our heap, squirming a little.

********

"You really are such a boisterous lot." came Ciel's familiar icy drawl, and I looked up and exhaled in relief as I saw him sitting upright in the bed. I wasn't the only one to be relieved by his recovery, either.

********

"Y-YOUNG MASTER!" Finny gasped, bolting upright and sending the rest of us tumbling off of him. "You're all back to normal, young master!" he cried, lunging across the room, only for Sebastian to grab him by the collar and cease his stomping progress right at the bed.

********

"Yes, yes. Stop right there." He lifted Finny with a distasteful look. "Do you intend to send the young master straight back to bed when he has finally pulled round?"

********

"Ah." Finny gasped. "F-forgive meee!"

********

Ciel huffed in amusement and held out his hand as Sebastian set the gardener down. "Finny. Sorry you got stuck taking care of me. I'm fine now."

********

"R-right." Finny gulped, gently taking Ciel's hand, before his face screwed up and he bowed over it, crying. "Right!"

********

Ciel looked over at the other servants as we got to our feet and dusted ourselves off. "The rest of you come over here too."

********

We came over and stood at attention in a neat line, facing Ciel as he sat on the edge of the bed and Finny stood up and stepped back to join us.

********

"There's something I must say to you all." Ciel began, and inhaled shortly, before looking up and facing us as a group. "I'm sorry."

********

"WH-WHAAA?!" we all spluttered at the completely uncharacteristic show of humility.

********

"Due to my thoughtless actions, you were all made to suffer unnecessary hardships and worry. Please forgive me."

********

"H-how can you say that, young master?!" Mey-rin squeaked.

********

"Please, you gotta raise your head!" Bardroy encourage him.

********

"You were cursed! You couldn't have done anything about it! –says Emily."

********

"That's right!" Finny agreed.

********

Ciel frowned, glancing at his knees. "No. It is a fact that the me here up till yesterday was still me. As your master, I vow to never again expose that miserable side of myself. So please…"

********

He looked up at us again.

********

"From this day forward, I ask you to serve me once more."

********

"Yes, my lord!" we all shouted in unison, saluting him.

********

"–says Bronte." Snake finished, making the rest of us sag.

********

"Didn't end quite right, that it didn't." Mey-rin mumbled beside Snake, as Bardroy shouted at him.

********

"You totally ruined it!"

********

"Now, then." Ciel said loudly, drawing their attention. "It may be a bit soon, but as your master, I have orders for you."

********

He turned red underneath his blisters.

********

"F-forget everything about the me who was here before today! Do it right away!"

********

There was a moment of silence, before everyone started laughing.

********

"Aw, c'mon, young master. You're askin' for the impossible!" Bardroy snickered.

********

"F-for someone of your age, young master, your earlier behavior is the norm, it is!" Mey-rin wheezed as Snake nodded silently.

********

"Whatever kind of memories they might be, I shall treasure them all!" Finny chimed as Sebastian shook at the end of our line, clearly about to faint from the effort of stifling his own laughter.

********

"Oh!" Mey-rin gasped in realization. "Does that mean you remember everything, young master?"

********

"Yes…the sooner I can forget it, the better." Ciel groaned, hand on his forehead. "I didn't act like that because I wanted to."

********

"What do you mean?" Sebastian asked.

********

"Harmless things seemed terrifying, and…I couldn't control myself…its hard for me to verbalize it."

********

"You see that sorta thing a lot on the battlefield, don'tcha?" Bardroy noted, folding his arms. "No matter how well they've been trained, when soldiers sustain grave, unimaginable injuries in battle, they all panic. Its pretty common, so I guess you might say it's a given that the young master ended up like that."

********

"Indeed. Under the effect of the "curse," your appearance was quite dramatic." Sebastian agreed, hand to his chin. "Perhaps the attack on your mind was also amongst its aims."

********

" _Aims_?" Ciel repeated suspiciously. "How do you mean?"

********

Sebastian rummaged in his suit and pulled out the letter than I'd been unable to catch a glimpse of before, holding it out to Ciel. "Please take a look at this."

********

Ciel lifted the flap, still with the wax seal attached, and pulled out the two sheets of writing, scanning over the first page before he blinked, eyes widening.

********

"…What is this? C4…is it some kind of cipher?"

********

"As we were in the middle of an emergency situation, I took it upon myself to act at my own discretion." Sebastian explained. "I sent to the palace for an investigation into the composition of both a sample of the flora from the Werewolves' Forest and the "magic elixir" used to treat you, young master."

********

"Heh." Ciel smirked. "I see. So in other words, _this_ is the true identity of the curse!"

********

"Just so. And Lady Sullivan, at the wolfman's request, is attempting to perfect the "ultimate spell."" Sebastian continued.

********

Ciel noticed the extra sheet. "Hm? The letter goes on…"

********

He moved the first one aside, and then jolted, his fingers crumpling the page. "As always, she asks for the impossible! _'It would give me great pleasure if the little witch would come to tea with me,'_ she says! She makes her demands with such ease!"

********

"Leave it to Her Majesty, the Queen." Sebastian said with a smirk. "Even her whims are at a royal level."

********

Ciel sighed and refolded the pages, setting them down on the bed. He glanced at the clock, then looked back at the rest of us. "There isn't much time until morning. You lot get to making preparations for our departure at once. I shall give you further instructions in due course."

********

"Yessir!" we all shouted, saluting again.

********

I bustled out with the others, getting our vital luggage together and hanging it on Finny, cleaning and assembling a rifle in Mey-rin's case, and preparing a bag of strange kitchen items in Bardroy's. He cleaned and loaded his guns as well, and I took my cue from the others, popping open my Colt and making sure all six of the chambers were good and all five bullets were properly in place. I half-pulled my combat knife, making sure it would slide easily in the sheath if and when I needed it to, then resheathed it and fidgeted in my pocket, counting out the bullets I had. People tended to frown upon walking around with a bandolier like you did in the movies, and I made a mental note to sew some pockets in the strap of my gun holster to at least add _some_ options. I probably only had twelve or so shots, all told, unlike Mey-rin, who had a satchel strapped to the outside of her thigh _full_ of more bullets.

********

As we bustled around the kitchen, keeping an eye out for Wolfram or any of the other servants via Snake's snakes, slowly arming up, I fingered my journal in my other side pocket, thinking of anything in it I could use in the upcoming fight. I'd gotten better at the ice spell, and somewhat improved my ability to levitate things, since I could manage to hold everything roughly vase-sized or smaller in the air for a few seconds. And my walls, of course. As of this moment, that's all I could do that was spontaneous, and everything else I tried in the field would require at least twenty seconds of preparation and checking my journal for the appropriate sigil.

********

I could manage with that. I could totally manage, right?

********

Sebastian and Ciel timed their arrival to a nicety, sneaking down to the kitchen to face us as we stood with weapons holstered or in hand, all packed and ready to go. Ciel was once again in that furred cloak and his usual type of suit, just as ready as we were.

********

"We shall be leaving the castle tonight." he began briskly. "Given the likely presence of a militant force here, our farewell gift, should we leave in the morning as directed, will be a hail of bullets or poison gas. We shall be splitting into two parties for this operation: Sebastian, Miss Thompson, and I shall endeavor to destroy the facilities for creating poison gas and liberate Sieglinde Sullivan. The rest of you wait outside the village until I fire a flare, at which point you shall converge on my location."

********

Ciel sighed and looked a little discomfited.

********

"Sullivan and I are of a like size, so to distract our foes and disorient any trackers, she and I shall switch clothing, and we shall split into two groups once more to divide our opponents."

********

He looked at Finny.

********

"Our first order of business is to get Sullivan out of the forest. On that note, Finny, you're to take her away."

********

"Me?" Finny asked in surprise, pointing to himself.

********

"Yes. I want you to bound through the woods faster than the wind, just like your namesake. Mey-rin and Tanaka shall accompany you for a guard, along with Miss Thompson, as we will evidently have to pry her away from her fellow witch if we wanted her elsewhere."

********

I laughed sheepishly and rubbed the back of my head.

********

"All things being well, we shall make it out of the forest and head for the closest city, where we shall reunite. Any changes of plan shall be signaled by me lighting another flare, which you shall again return to. Am I understood?"

********

"Yes, sir!" we shouted.

********

"Any questions?"

********

"No, sir!"

********

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: June 9th, 2020, 7.24 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: June 9th, 2020, 7.22 PM USA Central Time


	63. That Butler, Emerald

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few reviewers mentioned it on the original site, but Sebastian and Arya's dynamic doesn't change because *that* was just an exaggerated version of it. Arya's a fan of _Black Butler_ , so she knows full well (just like the rest of us) that Sebastian's an amoral dick, but as she notes, knowing and experiencing it for yourself are two very different things. Sebastian was so extra in warning her off because from a scientific standpoint, if he actually DID want to eat Ciel, she would technically be the greatest threat to doing so. Hence, he terrifies her out of even THINKING about it, since he knows he intimidates her already. They both view each other as lowkey threats, but they're generally comfortable enough to snipe at each other anyways. 
> 
> How many of you guys are shipping things here? Some fans paired Arya with characters from the prior fic, but I lost most of them with my two-year hiatus, but now even more are crawling out of the woodwork! This is honestly a point of genuine curiosity. I'm poking y'all rapidly with a stick. Just how many shippers are there for this fic/series?! 
> 
> Also, the reversal of italicized sentences in Sieglinde's perspective is because italicizing the sentences are how I indicate a language foreign to the perspective-holder. For Arya, German is italicized because although she understands it, it's not her native language and there's a half-second of mental translation before she fully understands the words. However, in Sieglinde's perspective, German is her native language, and English is the foreign language which needs that nanosecond of mental adjustment to understand. Just in case you thought she and Wolf were speaking English all of a sudden or I forgot to edit the chapter properly.
> 
> Also also, what Sieglinde creates is actually sarin, a lethal nerve agent discovered/created by German scientists in 1938. I've no fucking clue how sarin is made, nor how chemical equations really work, so take Sieglinde's exposition of how she creates the ultimate magic with a liberal pinch of non-lethal salt. As for her using her staff like it's glowing chalk, calcite does glow under UV light (her staff is identified as calcite by Sebastian, and the stuff she draws in the manga is explicitly said to glow), and calcite has a Mohs Hardness of 3, which means it can be scraped by a copper penny. For perspective's sake, the only things softer are minerals on Mohs 1 and 2, both of which can be scratched by the human fingernail.
> 
> My dad's also got a shot at his dream job, so send him some good vibes at getting it!

_3rd Person POV:_

Sieglinde scowled at her book, then flopped over the table in her room with a groan.

"Haaah…I just can't get this one last step to work. What do I doooo?!" she whined to herself.

She couldn't stop thinking about her talk with Fräulein Arya. She knew so much! Surely it was reasonable to ask if she could stay in Wolfsschlucht, since she was a fellow witch!

But no, no, Sieglinde was the Emerald Witch, and she must focus all her energies on perfecting the ultimate spell to protect the villagers, and the outsiders had to go. Or so said the wise woman, and all the people who relied on her, and Wolfram, too.

And Sieglinde understood that. It was her sacred duty, after all! This was what she had been raised to do, what her mother and all the previous Emerald Witches had strived so hard to achieve. Sieglinde wouldn't be the first to fail them. No, she would be the first to _succeed!_

Herr Wolfman would understand, and the contract would be fulfilled, and the forest would calm again, and everything would be wonderful!

Sieglinde tipped her chair back, rocking it on two legs as she closed her eyes.

"If I perfect the ultimate spell, I can quell the wolfman's anger." she murmured to the ceiling. "Then peace will come to this village as well, and then they can come have fun with me again…"

She could just imagine it now. Sebastian would come with Ciel and Fräulein Arya and a basket of those wonderful yummy cakes he made, and she would be there to greet them, waving eagerly in Wolfram's arms as he scolded her for being undignified. And Anne and Grete and Hilde would be there with a blanket and a basket of their own, too, and Fräulein Arya and the others would sit down with them and talk all about the things in the outside world, and she would come up with even more, greater magic, and-

Sieglinde's eyes snapped open.

Together. Synthesis. The way the disparate elements came together –it was what they were talking about before, with the Rede and the alchemic gestation and the runes of many different cultures and everything! All those parts put together was what made it work, and it worked because they were _different_ , but coming together in harmony anyways! That was what she needed!

Feverishly, she shoved aside the book and grabbed her latest page of notes, beginning to write. This was what she had been missing! The way to smooth all those disparate elements together and make them interlock in a lattice that formed exactly, exactly what she wanted! _This_ was the ultimate magic!

Her quill scratched over the sheets like she was possessed, and when Sieglinde pushed each page aside, she only hastened her progress on the next one as ideas flowed into her brain and the way the runes and the spellwork fit together only got more and more understandable, as if she was clearing away all the confusion of her research and dead-ends as she dashed along the path to the truth. It was working! This was going to work! Everything fell together in a neat, confined, logical, spell! It was perfect!

Sieglinde kept going, scribbling and scratching frantically, uncaring of food or rest or how messy she was getting as ink blotched her fingers and occasionally freckled her cheeks, writing madly as her fingers fought to keep up with her racing brain, her handwriting growing more and more sloppy with each hasty word.

She snatched up books and all but ripped them open as she hit snags, little bumps in her journey, but a swift glance over the proper runes and elemental properties had her going right back on track, and Sieglinde soon found the floor around her desk littered with half-opened books.

There wasn't enough room on the table.

She impatiently gathered her sheets up and heaved them onto the floor, spreading them out with swift movements of her hands as she rearranged them back into proper order, eyes shining. She was so close, she was _inspired_ , it was like magic was flowing straight through her veins, humming excitement and the urge to _keep going_ singing through her body.

She could do this. She could find the ultimate magic and protect everyone!

More books were snatched up, leafed through, discarded. Some papers were crumbled up into balls and thrown aside, and when Sieglinde reached up and dipped her quill into the inkwell too hard and deep, oversetting it as she pulled her hand back down, she ignored the ink splashing down onto the ground, staining the corner of a book opened facedown on the stone and one of her reference sheets with crossed-out errors.

She could do this. She _would_ do this!

Finally, finally, as she sat amidst a storm of papers and books on the ground, inspecting her latest page, Sieglinde's heart danced. She had done it. She had completed the ultimate magic!

Checking everything over again only made her heart soar higher. It was done! It was done! It was _perfect_! There wasn't a single slip or error anywhere in the entire formula, it was as watertight as a barrel and as mathematically precise as a snowflake.

Sieglinde shook with achievement. She'd _done_ it! Everyone would be so proud of her –no, not just that, everyone would be _saved_! It was amazing! This feeling…it was like she could leap through the clouds and go singing among the stars! Some of the books she'd read for pleasure mentioned "the heady wine of success," and as Sieglinde tasted that wine for the very first time, she found it richer and more indulgent than any sweet she had ever had before.

The door creaked open. Wolfram, of course, here to check up on her as always.

"My lady, it is about time you went to be-" He paused with a gasp as he saw her, and Sieglinde drew in a slow, shaky breath.

"Wolf…" she breathed, turning around excitedly. "It is done. Make ready for my duties at once!"

_***Time Skip***_

Someone less acquainted with Sieglinde would probably have expected her to be squirming with barely-repressed excitement as Wolf hastily carried her down to the bowels of the castle, where the ritual cavern lay. This was the culmination of her young life's work, and the life's work of so many Emerald Witches before her. She should be wiggling, chattering Wolf's ear off, waving her arms with exuberance and joy at having finally realized her truest potential.

And Sieglinde was afire with excitement, true, but it was the stilled, quivering sort of excitement that made every nerve in her body feel like it was pulled to razor-sharp attention, her pulse roaring in her ears and hands shaking with barely-controlled emotion. Her stomach was one solid knot, and though there was cool stone under her body when Wolf reverently set her down near the array, and the cold air of the cavern basement never varied, Sieglinde was still sweating as she shuffled forward past the ring of wolfmen and grabbed her staff, before crawling back to where she had last left off.

And she began to write.

The lighting down here was never the best, with only the glow of the runes and the strange purple light from the seven round lanterns on the ground around her to accompany her, along with the wolfmen standing between those lanterns like the guardian statues of some lost temple, and Sieglinde's nerves stretched even tighter as she worked over the sigil, taking care not to let her dragging skirts smudge or mar the powdered runes and chains. So much hinged on this one moment, this simple act of drawing words and lines and phrases on the ground by her, a little girl. Her ancestors, the villagers…they all depended on her to get this right. She _had_ to get this right!

"The pact we made with one another in a bygone time." she said as she finished near the center, sitting up and holding her staff horizontally before her. "I, descendant of the Emerald Witch, shall at long last, deliver my end, here and now."

She stood up, and taking careful, cautious steps until she exited the array, she let her skirts drop around her feet again, and let her staff drop too, now no longer needed "O wolfmen! Take heed of the magic I cast here."

Sieglinde raised her arms as if to encompass the entire circle.

"This is the ultimate spell!"

The wolfmen around her howled, long and loud, signaling that her advance had indeed been met with success, and Sieglinde's expression finally eased into a grateful, beatific smile.

"Now…I can finally…"

She swayed, and the world darkened around her as those deep, resonant howls echoed in her ears.

* * *

When she blinked her eyes open again, she saw the glass stars, the hanging curtains, and realized that she was in her room.

"Are you awake now?"

For a moment, her foggy eyes saw shaggy hair and a looming figure, and she wondered if it was the wolfman. Then her vision cleared, however, and she saw that it was Wolfram, smiling down at her tenderly.

"Wolf…"

She continued to blink as she sat up, realizing that her hair was unbound and she felt groggier than she ever had before. "Oh, right. I…was spent after completing the ultimate spell.

"Yes, my lady."

Wolf's face softened into a smile.

"Most magnificently done. Now, please change into your nightclothes."

Sieglinde smiled with more life, scooting over to the edge of the bed. "With this, we can finally rest easy." she said, her weariness overcome somewhat by the pride and joy welling within her.

"Quite." Wolfram agreed, bending to undo the straps to her tiny little elfin shoes. His face shadowed slightly as he did, his usually brisk and efficient movements slowing a little, and Sieglinde sighed.

"You're making that face again."

He grunted and looked up, and she smiled a little.

"Do you remember it? The day I succeeded the title of the Emerald Witch?"

Wolfram was silent again for a moment, looking around the vicinity of her ankles as his eyes lost focus and stared off into the distant past.

Sieglinde remembered it, remembered the soul-shaking agony and _snap_ that seemed to echo around her entire being and the air of the village as these very same hands wrapped around her then-normal feet, one by one, and _squeezed_. Her hands had clenched tight, but Hilde and Grete were there, bowing over her, keeping her fingernails from piercing her own palms as she arched her back and _wailed_ her agony, shuddering and incoherent.

"…I shall never forget it." Wolfram murmured after a second, and Sieglinde beamed at him, lifting up her stocking-clad feet so that they were level with his chest.

"Don't look so gloomy. These feet are my pride and joy. This is proof that I am a descendant of the great Emerald Witch."

Wolfram's solemn, almost guilty look faded a little, and Sieglinde breathed a little easier, her own gleeful expression relaxing.

"I'm glad I was able to fulfill one of the Emerald Witch's duties today." she hummed, casting her eyes down.

She wondered where the others were –it was nighttime now, so were they finally in bed? Was Ciel any better? Perhaps, now that the ultimate magic had been delivered, the wolfman had withdrawn the curse and its effects, leaving her companion in a better state of mind.

Sieglinde's eyes wandered to the window, where the curtains were drawn and she could she the stars in the night sky beyond. The stars looked so much bigger and brighter now, and she felt a tug of longing, wanting to get her broom out from the corner and go soar among them, but Sieglinde knew that was impossible. Wolf and the others had told her, the first time she'd tried: the magical energy witches used in the olden times to ride the winds on broomsticks was just like the miasma now, depleted and useless for its original purpose.

She remembered when she had been very young, scarce seven years, and she had straddled her broomstick by the open window, almost managing to waddle out into the open air before Wolf snatched her up, his whole body shaking. She had wiggled and squirmed and told him to let go, that she was a witch and she was going to fly because it looked so fun, and for some reason he had started _crying_ , his whole giant body shaking and scaring her worse than any yelling anyone had ever done. Adults weren't _supposed_ to cry, but Wolf was all but sobbing, clutching her tight like he was holding her small body together through main force, and after a few shaky breaths he had told her the truth, that the magic in the world wasn't strong enough yet, that if she pushed herself off the tower she would fall and _die_ , just like a regular human, and Sieglinde remembers feeling much less scared, pouting as she patted him wherever she could reach.

It wasn't fair! How come she couldn't fly like witches were supposed to! she remembers thinking, more focused on that than the nebulous possibility of dying, and the memory makes her smile softly as she looks at the sky. The magic will be strong now, so perhaps she will be able to ride her broom like she always wanted. Her work was completed, and the world was her oyster!

"Though I can no longer recall her face…I wonder if the previous Emerald Witch who gave birth to me…is also glad for me?"

"Of course, my lady!" Wolfram said, before giving her a fond smile. "Everyone is terribly proud of you."

Sieglinde giggled, scratching her cheek. She was glad to know no one else was upset or jealous, and it soothed her to think that her mother, wherever she was, would be glad to know her daughter was free of their ancestral duty.

"But…now that I've finished the ultimate spell, what more is there left for me to do as the Emerald Witch?" she asked, lowering her hand.

"W-well…" Wolfram began, eyes wide, before inspiration struck her and she grinned.

"I know! I'll go to the outside world and learn all kinds of things!" Sieglinde chirped, waving her arms. "Then I can do even more for this vil-"

"NO, MY LADY!"

Sieglinde stopped, shrank. Wolfram had never raised his voice so loudly at _her_ before, and she stared up at him with wide eyes as he stood before her, having shot up from his place kneeling by the bed.

"What…?" she whispered.

Wolf's clenched fists trembled at his sides. "My lady, you are the Emerald Witch. And I, your butler. We are to never leave Wolfsschlucht. That is the rule."

But…but why did they _need_ the rule, now? Sieglinde had done what was asked of her, what they had all wanted! What they needed! She had fulfilled the ultimate magic, and now the village was safe! There was nothing left for her to do here but protect, and there was nothing here that she needed to protect her villagers from, not anymore, not when Herr Wolfman was appeased!

Wolfram's expression softened after a moment, and he turned away, just like he had earlier before he brought her dinner.

"My lady, you must be very tired today. Please get some rest now. I'll bring your night things for her."

"Ah…" Sieglinde began, but she couldn't think of what else to say, how else to vocalize the vague, insistent protest she felt all the way down to her core. But then she sighed, and nodded, remembering how she had tried to pull him back earlier and fallen over for her pains.

"…Very well. I'll do as you say."

_***Time Skip***_

Sieglinde was woken from her deep, exhausted sleep some time –she didn't know how much time– later, hearing a faint, insistent noise at the edge of her hearing, sharp and unnatural, unlike the silence or night calls from the surrounding forest.

**Tap. Tap tap tap tap.**

She groaned and sat up, rubbing her eyes as the noise persisted.

**Tap tap tap tap.**

It was coming from outside. A bird, perhaps? No branch could ever grow this high, unless it was ivy, and she knew there was none this far up the tower.

Perhaps it was something magical!

Sieglinde crawled to the edge of her bed and swung her legs over, grabbing her bedside crutch that she had in case she needed to use the privy sometime during the night. She scooted off the edge of her bed and stood, balancing most of her weight on the wooden crutch as she looked around, trying to catch where the sound was coming from.

**Tap tap tap tap.**

The window? Wolfram had drawn the curtains to block out the moonlight shining in, so Sieglinde had no idea of what was on the other side.

"What is that…?" she mumbled to herself, hoping over as the insistent rapping continued.

Sieglinde drew the curtains, and gasped as she saw Ciel, Sebastian, and Fräulein Arya there, Ciel fully dressed in a furred cloak and comfortably perched in Sebastian's arms, fist against the glass of her window.

 _"Good evening, Lady Sullivan."_ Sebastian said through the glass in English, smiling as easy as he would on the ground and not perched hundreds of feet in the air on a thin stone balustrade. Fräulein Arya was _standing_ beside and slightly behind him, on what Sieglinde knew very well was absolutely thin air!

Well, she certainly knew the ultimate spell was working _now!_

 _"H-how did you get here!?"_ she gasped, hurriedly unlatching the windows and pulling them open. _"You'll surely die if you fall!"_

 _"Why the shock?"_ Ciel asked as Sebastian stepped inside, bending to kneel on the ground as he set his master down. _"You're a witch who can fly through the skies on a broom, aren't you?"_

 _"C-Ciel, you've regained your sanity!"_ Sieglinde gasped in delight as Fräulein Arya stepped onto the balustrade and then inside the room behind them.

 _"Yes, thanks to you."_ Ciel said. _"I wanted to express my gratitude before we departed."_

 _"You don't need to thank m-"_ Sieglinde began, then gasped and grinned slyly, putting a hand to her chin. _"I see. This is one of those "pay with your body" situations, isn't it? You've decided to treat me to a feast served on your naked body, haven't you?"_

_"NO!"_ Ciel spluttered as Sebastian chuckled sarcastically, and Fräulein Arya sighed, looking exasperated. Sieglinde didn't see why she should stop making these jokes, not when everyone around her had such amusing reactions to them.

 _"We have instead prepared that which you most desire."_ Sebastian said, hushing Ciel with a single finger as Sieglinde blinked, coming to attention.

_"What I most desire…you say?"_

_"The world beyond the forest."_ Sebastian answered, making her eyes go wide.

_"The world…beyond?"_

_"Indeed."_ Sebastian smirked as Ciel looked into her eyes. _"Knowledge and experiences that you would never be able to gain should you stay here in this village await you. What do you say?"_

 _"B-but!"_ Sieglinde said weakly, trying to protest. This felt too good, too easy, too _right_. Sebastian and Ciel had been marked by devil worshippers –what had they learned and seen in those dark places where they had been held prisoner? What powers of persuasion did they hold? _"I'm the Emerald Witch…and the village rules state…"_

 _"I see."_ Ciel said, making her blink as he turned his back on her carelessly. _"That's most unfortunate. I apologize for making an odd suggestion."_

Fräulein Arya looked unhappy as they all three of them turned back to the window, looking back over her shoulder several times with her dark eyes full of conflict.

 _"Then shut the window as you are and return to your bed, and come morning, we'll be gone, having been no more than a dream."_ Ciel continued, and an exhale of protest left her lips before Sieglinde could think.

Ciel turned back at her and smiled. "Thank you…friend." he said clumsily in German. "Goodbye."

Turning away, walking away, Sieglinde had _had_ it with her friends doing all of that. Wolfram, turning away as he told her she had to stay even when her work here was done, Sebastian and Ciel and Arya reaching out for her and smiling, it was _enough_.

Her crutch clattered to the ground, and Sieglinde seized the back of Ciel's hooded cloak.

 _"I-I'll go!"_ she cried, tugging at it to stop his horrible progress _away from her_ , before lifting her teary face to the trio.

_"There are…still so many things I want to know!"_

Ciel smiled, Sebastian smiled, and Arya frowned, cooing in concern as she knelt down and began to dab at Sieglinde's watery eyes.

 _"Then, my lady. Allow me to help you into more suitable clothing."_ Sebastian said with a slight bow. _"A debutante must be in full regalia as she takes her first step into a new world."_

* * *

Sieglinde shivered a little as Ciel led her, Sebastian, and Fräulein Arya down the castle steps. Fräulein Arya had "called dibs" on carrying her, and when Sieglinde looked up, she offered an encouraging smile.

Still, she couldn't remain silent for very long, and looked ahead, to where the bubble of lantern-light swayed and flickered as Ciel descended down the steps.

_"Hey…where are we headed? Never mind outside, we're only going deeper and deeper inside the Emerald Castle."_

Ciel looked back at her, his face full of the icy confidence that Sieglinde had remembered from their first meeting. _"The outside world exists past here."_

Sieglinde frowned, and burrowed her fingers a little deeper in Fräulein Arya's sleeves. Then she blinked, and pulled her hand away. She had touched something…leather? Flat and hard?

Fräulein Arya looked down at her and offered a small smile.

"You holding up okay?" she asked, and Sieglinde gave a timid nod. "Bet this all seems pretty weird, but I promise, there's a method in this madness."

That was comforting, and Sieglinde relaxed a little, which was good, because otherwise she would have shouted when they turned the corner and she saw the man-sized hole gouged in the stone blocks (which were now piled neatly to the side) near the secret doorway to the basement. Ciel was leading them right to it.

_"Surely do didn't go in th-"_

"Shh." Sebastian whispered to her. _"We will be discovered by the wolfmen if you raise your voice like that."_

Sieglinde blinked. There was something of conspiracy in the air here…and for a moment her heart felt chilled. Should she be trusting these outsiders like this? What if their designs were wicked?

No, surely not. They were her friends. Why would they want to hurt her? Arya and the others had been nothing but kind. They weren't evil, or wicked, or anything.

But why were they going deeper into the castle…?

Her carrier looked around as the trio stepped into the dark cage of her lift, and rocked on her heels a little.

 _"Sure hope this holds all our weight."_ Fräulein Arya murmured in English, before the lift began to smoothly descend.

There was silence from them all until the interlocking gates opened, and the trio stepped out, Ciel looking with interest at the diagram Sieglinde had offered not even a day before. The wolfmen were gone now, with only the dull purple glow of the lamps on the ground and the carvings themselves to offer light.

 _"So this is a magic circle, huh?"_ Ciel commented, walking over to it, and Sieglinde nodded from her place in Fräulein Arya's arms.

 _"Perfecting this was one of your Emerald Witch's duties, was it not?"_ Sebastian hummed, and Sieglinde gasped, looking at him.

_"How did you know that?!"_

He chuckled slightly. _"A little snake told me."_

 _"You can converse with snakes…"_ Sieglinde murmured, seeing him in a new light. _"Are you perhaps a warlock?"_

 _"I am no warlock. Merely one hell of a butler."_ he said, smiling.

Sieglinde began to drool.

 _"You are in possession of superior talents that are nigh-on magical…"_ she huffed, flushing as she put a hand to her lips. _"Your superior genes…I want them!"_

 _"Hey!"_ Ciel snapped as Fräulein Arya actually took a step away from the butler, arms squeezing warningly around Sieglinde's middle. _"Enough of your idle talk! Are you trying to turn my butler into a criminal?"_

Sieglinde pouted as Fräulein Arya turned to face him, before her expression smoothed over as Ciel began asking her questions that were actually important.

_"So these Emerald Witch's duties, what are they? Do they have something to do with the reason you're not allowed to leave this place?"_

She frowned a little, since talking about her duties to outsiders was forbidden, then began to explain.

_"I told you that the wolfman possesses evil magical power that brings harm to humans –in other words, the miasma in which its cloaked, right?"_

The others nodded, and Sieglinde looked up.

_"You probably already know this, Arya, but in ancient times, the atmosphere of this land seethed with miasma. Magical power, which manifests as miasma, is toxic to humans but is equivalent to oxygen for magical beings. However, at the price of human prosperity, it was lost. It is said that is why we witches lost our powers as well. The wolfmen who lost their power demanded of us witches a source that generates miasma in exchange for the protection of this forest."_

_"A source…of miasma…"_ Ciel mused.

_"Generations of Emerald Witches pursued spells to create miasma as the wolfman demanded. And this…"_

She pointed to the inscriptions on the floor.

 _"…is my offering to the wolfmen. It is a spell that invokes ultimate magic! If this magic is invoked, a highly concentrated miasma, the likes of which has never before been seen in history, will be produced for all eternity. Humans who come in contact with even a negligible amount of this miasma will immediately perish."_

Sieglinde raised her hand, wanting to instill the proper measure of caution in her friends. Yes, she had made something that would help magical creatures, but to humans, this was deadly.

_"The miasma to which you were exposed in the forest is all that remains of an ancient spell."_

_"I see." _Sebastian hummed, then smirked, making her blink. _"So this is the history you have been **taught**."___

____

_"What do you mean?"_ she asked, and gasped as he started towards the altar, wiggling urgently in her fellow witch's arms. _"Don't! If someone other than the Emerald Witch touches that altar…"_

____

She trailed off when he grabbed the rounded altar and pushed it forward smoothly, and nothing occurred, except a round hole was revealed in the floor where the altar had been.

____

_"What will happen?"_ Sebastian asked.

____

_"A calamity will…eh?"_

____

Sieglinde leaned as high as she could get in Fräulein Arya's arms as she obligingly stepped forward, blinking in surprise as she saw some kind of metal contraption with a lever inside the hole, which Sebastian was reaching for. He pulled it, and Sieglinde jumped as there was a loud, grating _rumble_ of stone on stone nearby.

____

_"Wha-"_ she gasped as Fräulein Arya turned towards the noise, seeing one of the crystal-infused decorative gates nearby shifting, pulling aside to reveal another metal door, covered in rivets and with several odd devices hung upon it, round and glassy. _"What…is this?!"_

____

_"Now, Lady Sullivan."_ Sebastian said to her as he stood up again. _"The true outside world lies just beyond this door. You may still turn back if you wish."_

____

Her little heart pounded in her chest. This moment was going to be final, going to decide the whole rest of her life, but for Sieglinde, there was not even a moment of hesitation. She knew too much now to hesitate, knew there was strangeness and conspiracy and _unexplained things_ lurking in her castle, and she needed to know about them. Outside world or no, she needed to know why such a thing was in her home, and what it was doing here, and absolutely everything else about it. Curiosity drove her alongside her duties, the urge to seek and find and know about everything, and that was why she had welcomed these strangers with open arms, that was why the outside world held such fascination for her, and that was why she would not tolerate the not-knowing of something, not when she had a chance to find out.

____

_"We go on!"_ she said firmly.

____

Sebastian and Ciel seemed approving of her choice as they walked into what seemed to be a steel-box version of her own lift, and though Fräulein Arya's arms were decidedly thinner than Wolfram's, they were warm and supportive, and she was doing a good job of carrying Sieglinde without making her feel like she was in the way, which was harder to manage than one might think.

____

Ciel pressed a button with a downwards arrow, and Sieglinde felt a gentle bump in her stomach as they began to descend. Machinery whirred in the background, a sleepy hum like that of bees, and the diagram across the top of the doors lit up, with each light flicking backwards as they continued to descend, until it hit the B4 sigil, the last one, and there was a soft _ding_ as the walls parted with a whoosh of air.

____

It was like an unlike anything she had seem before, just a simple tunnel with ramped down floor, but the walls were of a strange, smooth stone she hadn't ever seen before, and lanterns were strung together on thick black cord and chains on both sides of the arched ceiling, emitting a steady golden light without a single flicker. She marveled at them as they all stepped out into the tunnel, Ciel using his own lantern to peer at a nearby door, which lay slightly ajar.

____

He inhaled sharply, and waved. _"Hey. Come, you three."_

____

Fräulein Arya walked over, followed by Sebastian, and they all peered through the door, which showed an empty room with more of those strange lanterns and, even more oddly, moving diagrams on large flat windows, and circular glass disks underneath those with radial green lines and an endlessly spinning green line, like a clock with only one hand. The room was filled, too, with soft pinging noises, and those round glass things and the square dark mirrors seemed to be workstations of a sort, for although there was a table in the center of the room with papers and an odd device atop it, there were also many chairs gathered at those key points near the walls.

____

_"Look at all these glowing pictures…"_ Sieglinde whispered as Fräulein Arya carried her into the room, leaning closer to one curiously and tapping it with a fingernail. She reached out herself, and found the flat pane to be warm, like some kind of animal. _"Are they a new kind of magic circle?"_

____

_"These dots of light…they're moving rather slowly."_ Ciel murmured himself, peering at one of the higher windows, which had little green lights drifting sluggishly around marked lines. _"Is this a map of Wolfsschlucht?"_

____

"Oh!" Sebastian hummed, as though realizing something. _"Humans do indeed come up with some fascinating things!"_

____

_"What are you talking about?"_ Ciel asked, and the butler stepped over to one of the largest windows, at the back of the room.

____

_"This flashing map and the moving dots…I believe they might indicate the current locations of the villagers?"_

____

_"What?!"_ Sieglinde and Ciel gasped, but Fräulein Arya seemed oddly unmoved.

____

_"Radar."_ she huffed, and shook her head, as though disappointed in something.

____

_"Radar?"_ Sieglinde asked, clutching her sleeve timidly.

____

_"It's a device, a mechanical device that emits special waves on the electromagnetic spectrum. They can't be seen or felt, but they can be heard with the right equipment, and similarly with the right equipment, you can have a tracker. All it needs is a transmitter and a receiver, and one of those things is right here in this room."_

____

She tapped the back of her knuckles against a glass plate. Sieglinde felt sick.

____

_"The amulets…they are likely tracking devices that transmit that signal, which in turn is captured here. We were right to leave them behind."_ Sebastian murmured, and Ciel's eyebrows rose as he looked up at the largest map.

____

_"You can avoid the wolfmen and the miasma if you wear an amulet. I never imagined such advanced gadgets existed…"_

____

_"I certainly didn't think they'd been invented yet."_ Fräulein Arya mumbled to herself, barely audible, making Sieglinde's eyebrows furrow. Was she…?

____

There was a clatter from outside, and like hawks sighting a rabbit, all three of the others tensed and whipped around to look at the door, then ducked behind the flat table. Fräulein Arya hissed as she bumped her knee in keeping Sieglinde from hitting her head, but they were otherwise silent as loud footsteps tromped towards them –and then away, down the rest of the hall.

____

"Hey! Come quick!"

____

"Is it finished at last?!"

____

_"Those voices were…"_ Ciel mumbled, hands splayed against the ground to keep his balance, and Sebastian nodded.

____

_"Let us go and see."_

____

They cautiously peeked out into the tunnel, then proceeded further down the hallway when they saw that no one was there, creeping along until they came to a corner. Peeking around it revealed two more doors with a circular wheel for a handle, and Sebastian seized it in both hands and twisted with a strange creaking of metal levers.

____

Cracking the doors open, peeking through, and then slipping into the room revealed a strange –Sieglinde could only think of it as a laboratory, with huge pipes and rounded metal chambers and pumps, all whumming and chuffing away quietly.

____

"What…is this?" she whispered as Fräulein Arya slowly carried her along a path between these vast metal giants, and Sebastian hummed.

____

_"Seems like a factory used for the production of something."_ he said, and Ciel paused, trailing behind them both.

____

_"There is a lift here as well…"_

____

Sudden cheering broke out, making all of them flinch and turn, and Sieglinde felt Fräulein Arya's muscles go hard and tense, like she was expecting a blow.

____

But the clamor was not directed at them, and slowly, the trio snuck over, with Sieglinde clinging to her carrier tightly and trying to remain as silent as possible as they wove their way between several large metal cylinders, crouching down to hide among them, until they could peek out over the roaring crowd of…wolfmen?

____

"Look here! Our Emerald Witch has finally accomplished it!" a familiar voice screeched over the crowd, and Sieglinde gasped as Fräulein Arya set her down and they all four of them peered a ragged figure standing on a flight of steps before a large crowd of wolfmen.

____

"The village crone…?" she whispered to herself, and the woman raised a tiny glass vial above her head.

____

"This ampoule contains a condensed form of highly concentrated miasma, the likes of which has never been seen before. It will dramatically change the course of history!"

____

No, no this was _too_ much, and Sieglinde lurched forward without thinking, sending one of the metal cannisters to the floor with a clatter. Realizing the danger she and the others were in as the hulking wolfmen whipped around, Sieglinde didn't bother trying to crawl backwards, but instead moved forwards, pulling away from their hiding place so at least the others wouldn't be caught too.

____

"You all…what on earth is going on here?!" she demanded frantically.

____

"The Emerald Witch…"

____

"It's the Emerald Witch!"

____

"GET HER!"

____

The wolfmen ran forward with clawed hands raised, and Sieglinde flinched and closed her eyes, preparing for pain and hoping that, like real wolves, these ones would focus on the prey before them and not go sniffing around for more. Hopefully, the others would escape.

____

Huge, splayed hands grabbed her, patting all over, and for a split second she remembered Fräulein Arya's advice –scream for Wolfram and kick them in the groin– but then she realized these touches were just _like_ Wolfram's, concerned and light and not so much feeling her body as feeling for irregularities on it, cuts or scrapes or bumps or bruises.

____

"Are you all right!?"

____

"Bring a chemical suit quickly!"

____

"What in the world are the men upstairs doing!?"

____

She felt battered, physically battered by the strangeness of it all. The wolfmen's mouths weren't moving, and they were speaking as a human might, but their voices were muffled, like they were behind a scarf. What was going on? What…?

____

"How to the numbers look?" one asked, glancing over to another that held a device incongruously within his massive paws.

____

"All green!"

____

"Good!"

____

"What…are you…?" Sieglinde finally managed.

____

"Mistress Sullivan." one began, then gasped as there was a flash of light.

____

His fur, his face, his _skull_ fell away, divided neatly into two halves, and inside was a shocked-looking man with a mustache, and behind him stood Sebastian, gleaming silver knife in hand.

____

_"What do you think of this, Lady Sullivan?"_ he asked with an almost cruel smile. _"The outside world is full of surprises, is it not?"_

____

"A…a human…male?" she choked as that knife whipped under the man's chin, forcing him up and away from her.

____

Ciel picked up the discarded head, revealing that the muzzle full of snarling teeth was empty and hollow except for a strange, chambered device.

____

_"Gas masks were built into the wolves' long snouts. What an elaborate farce this is."_ he sneered, then lifted the face –the mask to her. _"The wolfmen are humans in paper mâché. And the miasma –it's a toxic gas, a chemical weapon made right here in this plant!" He shouted to her. "Neither wolfmen nor curses exist. They were all fabrications to deceive you!"_

____

"N…no…" Sieglinde managed, and felt Fräulein Arya bend over her protectively, hands on her shoulders, bared by her dress. "Then, what exactly was the magic spell…I perfected…?"

____

"Indeed, what you perfected is not magic," the crone agreed, sending a stab right through Sieglinde's heart. "It is something much more wonderful!"

____

She held up the ampoule to her own face.

____

"Most living, breathing creatures will fall dead at the slightest contact with the vapor of this liquid. Be proud of yourself! You have created the most powerful toxic gas ever known to man!"

____

The crone grinned excitedly to herself.

____

"Oh yes. I must name this chemical weapon that will make history."

____

Sieglinde shook as the old woman began mumbling to herself.

____

"Sullivan. Ultimate weapon, ideal, fog. The acronym is SLeINe. No. SuLIN. I shall name is SuLIN!"

____

She screeched in victory, and Sieglinde felt like she was cracking apart.

____

"What I was creating…all this time…wasn't a magic spell…but a toxic gas?" she whispered, and felt her eyes burn as the tears began to come, sliding thickly down her face. "That spell…wasn't meant to protect the villagers. I was only making a weapon for killing people…?!"

____

Hilde and Grete, showing her all those magic books, laughing and smiling and making her learning seem like fun…Anne gently dabbing her messy food away and telling her how cute she was…Wolfram, who let her ride on his shoulders and yank on his hair without a whisper of complain..

____

"Was everyone…deceiving me all this time!"

____

Sieglinde flung her head back and wailed.

____

"Say its not true! Wisewoman!"

____

"There is no need for you to cry, Sieglinde." the old woman said. "You were able to create the ultimate chemical weapon because you were born with a brain unlike any other and raised in an environment where you could focus solely on you research."

____

She raised both her hands, one holding her gnarled staff and the other the glass vial of chemical gas.

____

"You do not need to lament! You have changed history!"

____

No, no no no no no, this was all wrong! This was a dream! This had to be a dream, a nightmare, something so scary she was going to need to hug Wolfram for _hours_ when she woke up! But she couldn't wake up, she couldn't jerk awake like she needed to!

____

_Why couldn't she wake up?!_

____

"You are the loved one I lost that day." the old woman continued hoarsely, making her blink as more tears ran down her face. "So stop crying, my dear daughter."

____

"Daugh…ter…?" Sieglinde whispered.

____

The hag fished in her robe, pulling out a weathered picture.

____

"I was a member of a military project thirteen years ago. The project's objective was to turn a toxic gas, believed to be impossible to mass-produce for twenty years due to its hazardous nature, into a viable weapon. That gas was what is commonly known as "mustard gas." One genius scientist devised a safe method to synthesize it, and the project was a success. Everything was proceeding apace. However…an unexpected accident occurred in the mustard gas factory one day. And he passed away –I too was terribly disfigured."

____

Her lips turned downwards, as though in grief.

____

"His brain was the treasure of the state. We were all grief-stricken. However…his genes had taken root inside of me, and sprouted once more. The child who was born soon displayed her gifts. She commanded the entire alphabet at the age of three, and understood the synthesis of mustard gas. It was then that I became convinced. The mind that I had fallen in love with had been reborn! I negotiated with the government and launched a new project. It was the plan to educate a genius so she could create the ultimate weapon!"

____

The wisewoman smiled fondly in recollection.

____

"To nurture a genius scientist, what was essential was an environment where she could immerse herself in research while maintaining her motivation. I isolated my daughter from what can only be called distractions to a genius. Logic, common sense, amusement, pleasure, and the like…these and all other mundane things did I remove from her environs. That is why I had an entire village built for her. I constructed a world in which she would willingly stay. An exceptional existence called the "Emerald Witch." Her "duties" to protect villagers from the wolfmen. Thus, "Wolfsschluct" was born. You were able to immerse yourself in research because you were here. You were able to develop a new weapon in less than ten years! The project was a success, Sieglinde!"

____

Sieglinde screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to block out such _lies_ , such putrid truths. It couldn't be true! It had to be a lie, a trick, anything! Those words crawled in her brain and smeared over anything and everything she had ever known, ever _experienced_ , trampling her life's work and her love and her wish to protect everyone and anyone into the dirt.

____

"My lady!" she heard Wolfram's deep bellow as she bent on the ground and Fräulein Arya bent over her, as though protecting her from the wolfmen all around. She heard the tap of Sebastian's heel as he moved between her and Wolf, and sniffled, trying to bring up her heavy head as she heard his voice close by.

____

"You were deceiving me…too…" she choked, realizing he was _here_ , that he knew about _here_ , that he had been hiding the truth from her with all the others and making her into a murderer.

____

"LIAR!" Sieglinde cried with all the hurt and grief and fury welling in her soul, whipping her head up to face him as tears poured down her face, and Wolfram shuddered, face growing pale, like she had shot him.

____

_"You crushed your own child's legs…and continued to threaten her for the sake of new weapons."_ Ciel growled as she felt Arya's hands shift on her shoulders. _"How can you call yourself a parent?"_

____

_"Oh **yes**."_ Fräulein Arya snarled, and her voice was almost a feral hiss. _" **Please** give me a reason to fucking shoot the bitch."_

____

_"Children are not tools for their parents to use!"_ Ciel cried, and there was a loud noise in the room, like an explosion, a shattering of glass, and Sieglinde gasped as Fräulein Arya picked her up in one swift movement, lunging away from the steps and the wolfmen around them.

____

"Sieglinde!" the hag, her _mother_ , screeched, and Sieglinde shivered as she heard Wolfram's voice.

____

"Stop right there!"

____

"Don't shoot!" came the hollow whuff of one of the men in wolf costumes. "You might hit a gas cylinder!"

____

Fräulein Arya carried her into the second lift Ciel had found, and he slammed his fingers down on one of the buttons as Sieglinde felt a startled cry rise in her throat. But what about the last member of their group?! They were leaving him behind!

____

_"Sebastian! Take care of the rest!"_

____

_"Yes…my lord."_ she heard the butler purr, and then the metal doors closed on them, blocking out the clamor of the wolfmen and the metal horrors beyond.

____

_Arya's POV:_

____

Sieglinde seemed to be pushed into a state past beyond grief and dumb shock into complete and utter emotional numbness and despair, weeping silently on my shoulder for most of the ride up and as we threaded our way quickly through the shadows to the forest outside the castle and village. She had stopped crying by the time Ciel prepped his flare gun and shot a flare up through the canopy, light exploding over us in a brief wash of daytime brilliance, and I knelt to gently set her down on the ground, patting her hair tentatively before grabbing the throat of my dress and pulling it up over my head, revealing the boy's shirt, vest, and trousers I was now wearing. I spent a second readjusting my combat knife, undoing the strap around my wrist and lengthening to put it around my thigh again, and rearranging my Colt and its holster-strap, before turning back to the other two. If I was gonna run through a hail of bullets in a forest, I was certainly not gonna do so in a fluffy Victorian dress.

____

"The outside world is full of those who would take advantage of you." Ciel told Sieglinde, who had barely sat up from where I had set her down. "You may yet experience more hardships than even you did today. So choose. Will you still venture beyond this forest? Or…"

____

I stiffened as Ciel pulled a gun out from under his cloak and held it to Sieglinde's forehead.

____

"Will you take the easy route instead?"

____

"Woah woah woah woah!" I blurted, stepping over to them and tugging the gun away by the muzzle so it was at least no longer aimed at her directly. "I think we can settle this without that, don't you?"

____

"I…" Sieglinde choked, making me fall silent and Ciel cease any retaliation he was about to enact. "I'm horrified I brought SuLIN into the world. I no longer know what to believe in. I don't want to think anymore. I…"

____

She started to cry again.

____

"I just want to disappear…"

____

Ciel yanked his gun out of my hand, glaring at me, before his gaze returned to her. "True. If you've lost the will to utilize your prodigious brain, it would be better off fertilizing the weeds instead. If you die, you need not hear the death throes of those you might've saved."

____

"…Saved?" Sieglinde croaked, managing to look up at him with reddened eyes.

____

"Aside from any scientific possibilities granted by the kind of mind that could develop the ultimate poison, I do happen to have in my employ a _real_ witch." Ciel said, jerking his head towards me slightly as Sieglinde's eyes widened.

____

"Magician, actually." I corrected. "But I could teach you a thing or two, yeah."

____

I opened my palms, filling them with magic as light sparkled and danced between my fingers. Sieglinde's eyes widened even more.

____

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you the full truth earlier, when we suspected there was mischief afoot." I told her, closing my hands and extinguishing the light. "But I can tell you anything, everything you want to know about magic _now_. I can teach you how to be a real witch, not just a healer. Someone who can use magic _and_ science to save people…to save anyone you want."

____

"Anyone…I want…" Sieglinde breathed.

____

"Indeed." Ciel murmured. "So, Emerald Witch, I will ask you again. Will you die and flee? Or live and fight?"

____

Sieglinde's hands clenched in the thick skirts of her dress. "I…I want to live!" she said, looking up at us. "I want to live and fight!"

____

Ciel smiled and tucked his gun back away. "Very well." he said, then knelt and offered her his hand. "Then let us leave this village together, Sullivan."

____

Her eyes grew teary again, but this time it seemed to be from an excess of emotion rather than sadness, and she nodded vehemently a few times.

____

"That's the spirit!" I cheered, grabbing her from the forest floor with a squeak and hugging her tightly. "Now let's get out of here!"

____

"We'll change location in advance of our pursuers' arrival and join up with the rest of my servants." Ciel said, turning to stride off into the forest as I adjusted my grip to hold Sieglinde more naturally and followed after him. "The flare exposed our whereabouts."

____

"What about Sebastian?" Sieglinde asked worriedly. "If they use the miasma…rather, the mustard gas on him…"

____

Ciel smirked. You needn't worry. There's nothing my butler can't do."

____

"What we need to worry about is people shootin' at us while we run through the forest." I agreed. "I won't be carrying you the whole way, since I'm not the fastest runner we got. That's Finny."

____

"The gardener?" Sieglinde blinked. "But then, what will you be doing, Arya?"

____

I sweatdropped, even as I continued to trot after Ciel.

____

"Suffering, most likely." I told her, deadpan. "I'll be your backup, y'know, making sure nobody gets close enough to take you and Finny out, along with our maid and Mister Tanaka."

____

Speak of the devil, I heard Mey-rin's voice behind us.

____

"There they are!"

____

"Young master!" Bardroy shouted as we stopped and turned. "You three all right?"

____

"We're fine." Ciel said as I set Sieglinde down and Finny made his introductions. "Well then, we'll divide into two groups as planned and escape from this forest. Our retreat operation begins now!"

____

Knowing what that meant, I groaned and stepped off into the undergrowth as Mey-rin confirmed her route with Finny and dashed off in advance of me. The other servants were under the impression that I was going to hide in the treetops and snipe, similar to her, but coming from behind.

____

And yeah, technically that was what I'd be doing. But I didn't have the agility to hop from tree to tree or keep up with Finny when he was really pouring on the speed, so I was going to have to find myself a vehicle.

____

Ignoring the sounds of Ciel explaining our plan to Sieglinde and changing clothes with her, I looked around for the nearest, thickest branch or log I could find. Seeing a decently-sized one about ten inches or so in diameter and slightly longer than I was buried in the limp undergrowth, I unsheathed my combat knife and knelt down, starting to carve the appropriate runes into it. After a few moments, the log shivered and rose into the air, and I began brushing and yanking bits of plant and branches off of it, dusting the surface off as much as I could before continuing to carve, working as best I could with the tip of my combat knife and a care for the slightly-moldering wood.

____

Eventually I had the stripped log freed from the other tangling branches and hovering at about waist-height, and I continued to carve frantically, inscribing the same levitation spell and rough directional runes over and over again, covering as much as I could. Since lifting myself above the forest with my magic walls like I'd done to escape the sinking _Campania_ didn't mean I'd be able to run any faster, that had been an out when I considered my escape routes. Similarly, doing that would also block my ability to shoot down at the people following Finny, and also leaving a glowing trail in the sky, not something I exactly wanted the other servants to get an eyeful of.

____

So I was going to need a vehicle roughly my size or smaller.

____

Which, in this case, meant something very similar to a witch's broom. I obviously wasn't going to go to the effort of making this log _look_ like a broom, because that didn't matter –I was going to be using it more like a buoy than anything else, except in air instead of water.

____

"We're done." Ciel called from the other side of the bushes, and I moved to give him a thumbs up before abruptly realizing that he couldn't see me.

____

"Uh, right! Good over here too!"

____

"Very well then. We're leaving!"

____

The others rustled off, and I wasted a moment or two glancing around to make sure they couldn't see what I was about to do, before I sighed and stepped over to straddle the log. Leaning forward, I rested my breastbone against the bark, wiggling a little to make sure I wasn't pressing anything uncomfortable and my head was within easy reaching distance of the forward end, before I swung my legs back, wrapping and locking them around the back part of the log. My left arm curled beneath the log to steady my balance and maintain equilibrium, and with a nudge of my will, it rose smoothly into the air, with me clinging onto the log like a sloth.

____

Yeah, not the most glamorous way to ride a magic quasi-broomstick, but doing it the way you saw in films and cartoons and stuff _hurt_. I mean, you were basically straddling and _resting all of your bodyweight_ on a pole for an extended period of time, which was pressing into all the soft parts of the middle of your pelvis. I mean, try that on the arm of a couch or something, which is usually still padded, and tell me that that's not uncomfortable as hell. A wooden branch? Uh-uh. No _way_ was I doing that.

____

At least with a thicker log like this, I could distribute my weight a little more evenly on the unlikely occasion I did sit up, spreading it over my thighs and the back of my pelvis rather than a thin line down the middle, and when I leaned over on my stomach like this, my weight was distributed across my entire body rather than that one painful point. Also, this way, my grip on said log was a lot more secure, and, most crucially, I could aim and fire my gun, since with a slight margin of error I was basically laying flat on a plane, much like your stereotypical sniper.

____

Breaking through the canopy required some careful mental nudges, but eventually me and my incongruous "broomstick" were drifting about fifty feet above the trees, and I scooted forward and sat up just a little, propping myself up with my forearm angled diagonally over the wood. Sieglinde and Finny and the other two had gone left, so I drifted that way as well, scanning through the trees for the signs of pursuit. Thankfully this part of the forest seemed to be young, so the trees were mostly thin, though they were still close together, and the canopy cover was sparse.

____

_There you are._

____

I wasn't sure where the bastards had popped up from –probably the underground laboratories– but there was a squadron or so of German soldiers in the stupid pre-WW1 helmets and crisp uniforms advancing down the path Finny had taken, rifles and other guns in hand.

____

_There'll be none of that, thank you._ I thought grimly as I reached back for my Colt, pulling it out and wiggling forward even more, until I could comfortably place my left arm over the very edge of the front of my log and lay my Colt across it, squinting down into the dark forest at my targets. I tried to ignore the nervous, precarious feeling tingling at my nerves from how I was barely staying on this fast-moving object by only the grip of my legs and the inertia of my body, dividing my attention between the need to continuously feed into the runes to keep me moving at this pace and the desire to aim.

____

I pulled my hammer back with my thumb and fired, grinning a little as a soldier at the back of the line dropped. All those weeks of frantic practice pre- _Campania_ had really improved my aim: I could shoot a guy, and hit him, from some sixty feet away, at night, while moving at speed, through the trees. How awesome was that!?

____

Granted, I wasn't actually putting that much effort into killing them, I thought as I quickly clicked the hammer back and took another shot. I wasn't aiming for the heads, either, because that was a _tiny_ target at this distance and I wasn't trying to be impressive, I was trying to be efficient.

____

And efficiency, in this scenario, meant shooting these guys in the torso, regardless of whether or not I hit a vital and they died, because there were few people that could or would keep running forward into a combat scenario with a bullet through any part of their chest or abdomen. Heck, not killing them was the _better_ option, because it tied up more of the soldiers in helping their wounded comrades out, since this wasn't a video game and even the bad guys here didn't just leave their comrades to bleed out and die.

____

And, well, even if some of them were dicks and kept going…a wounded soldier was still out, in this case.

____

**Blam!**

____

_Hit. Pull hammer back._

____

**Blam!**

____

_Hit. Pull hammer back._

____

**Blam!**

____

_Hit. Pull hammer back._

____

**Reload.**

____

This was an even more ticklish process, given as, again, I was flying through the air and needed both hands to reload without the risk of dropping my Colt. Also I had drawn the attention of people with guns and even though they were looking around wildly at _ground level_ , because who could reasonably expect a chick on a log flying through the sky in an age when even mechanical flight had yet to be invented, there was still the increasingly likely chance that I was gonna get shot.

____

I got all six chambers reloaded quickly enough, however, since I wasn't going to be carrying my gun around and didn't need to worry about it getting jostled and accidentally going off, and wiggled forward again, scanning the forest to see what was what.

____

They still hadn't quite managed to pick out where I was, and after a decent amount of time where no one had been shooting at them, they'd probably assumed I was someone on the ground or in a tree, and sent a small troupe around to deal with me while the rest kept going after Finny, whom I could dimly see bounding through the forest up ahead at a _very_ fast pace indeed.

____

Their mistake.

____

I cocked the hammer back and kept firing, drawing faint cries of alarm and pain from the forest floor, my eyes narrowed as I picked apart the moving shadows of my targets and shot them down. This was…easier than I had expected it to be, but then again, I was never really sure if my targets were _dying_ or not, and at this distance…it was a hell of a lot like a video game. Find target, shoot target, accomplish goal. It was hard to visualize the blobs running around on the ground as people, and even when I did, there was a lingering sense of dislike and animosity from the fact that they had conspired to lie to Sieglinde and keep a child in this weird, cultish scenario for the sake of developing a chemical weapon…not to mention the fact that they were going to try and kill her.

____

Well, they certainly weren't if Finny, me, and Mey-rin had anything to say about it.

____

I watched a flash of movement and paler color _leap off a fucking cliff_ , and my heart lurched in panic as I watched Finny and the rippling shadow that was Sieglinde's cloak plummet to the river below. Even knowing they would be fine, that was terrifying to watch, the sort of split-second jolt of panic you got when running a red light or, as I now intimately knew, fell from a height _yourself_.

____

The squadron running after them paused at the top of the cliff, and now my gunshots were joined with Mey-rin's as we peppered them with bullets. Screams and frantically issued commands rose from the bluff, before all the surviving soldiers –and there weren't many of those– ran back into the trees, retreating from their extraordinarily vulnerable position.

____

A second gunshot echoed, and since neither Mey-rin or I were firing I looked down to the river in panic, seeing the pale blob that was probably Tanaka standing before Finny and Sieglinde, with a silver flicker in his hands that was apparently a sword. Words seemed to pass between Finny and Tanaka, before Finny ran off, and I saw someone in the uniform of the German military unit approaching Tanaka. I was briefly torn between going after Finny and Sieglinde and staying here to help, but that decision was swiftly made for me as Tanaka flashed forward, moving faster than any old man had a right to as the solider in question –I vaguely remembered it was one of the village ladies?– jerked back, blood spraying from a cut on her arm. If I tried to shoot down into that melee, there was a decent chance I'd hit Tanaka instead of her, he was moving so fast and so close, giving her no time to use or even draw her gun.

____

Leaning sideways, carefully, I brought my awkward vessel around, and with a mental nudge towards the runes powering it I flew off in pursuit of Sieglinde and Finny. Since no one else seemed to be in immediate pursuit of them right now, I had a moment or two to think, which I did –although I kept my gun out, just in case.

____

_Let's see…Sieglinde gets carried off by Finny, and I'm pretty sure our group don't encounter any opposition after this point…Ciel dresses up as her, gets wounded, Sebastian comes in to save him after destroying the research facility…Sebastian and Ciel send that German guy Diedrich off to a train station or something with Bardroy and Snake and the gas samples…in the meanwhile, Sebastian and Ciel destroy the tank which they discover Germany has when it attacks them…then they go en route to the train station as well…Wolfram splits off from the rest of the military when he realizes they're shooting to kill even though Sieglinde hadn't yet left the forest…_

____

Yeah, everybody should start heading for the train right now, or at least, right now-ish. My only problem with that was that I didn't know where the train was, only that there was some kind of track and some kind of train with an engine and at least one car somewhere within walking/running distance of the others in this forest, not exactly the most helpful of directions…especially on such a dark night. Sure, had it been day, I could've risen up a bit higher above the treetops and had a look-around for said train, but right now, one dark vague splotch was as good as any other in this treeline.

____

Everything was moving so _fast_. In the manga, all these confrontations had taken up a good chunk of the material, but here it was wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am and _done_. Which made sense, I guessed. All the dramatic angles and movement shots and so on dragged the time out: an attack like, say, taking a swing at someone with a knife just took a few seconds-real time, but was generally expanded into at least three or four panels in comic book form, just because that was the bare minimum to convey dynamic movement. Plus, when your adrenaline was running hot everything in a fight seemed to be slowed down, and since I was shooting from a distance with considerably lower threats and stakes, I was something more of a viewer than usual, and therefore things seemed to zip right on by me.

____

Thinking on the plot suddenly brought me to the abrupt realization that someone would be sending up flare to indicate a change in direction, aka a change towards the train station, and they would be sending those flares _up into the sky_ , where I was right now.

____

_Ulp._

____

Swallowing nervously, I clenched my legs and knees tighter around my log to wrap my legs around it more securely, and retracted some of the power I'd put into the runes, feeling the log wobble a little, then start to drop. Given as we were going to hopefully be free of military interference from here on out, or at least until we all joined up again, I felt it was safe enough to drop down to just a mere ten feet or so above the treeline, and the only reason I wasn't really skimming the tops was because I'd grown up in a rural enough area to know that not all trees were created equal, and somewhere in this relatively flat canopy there was going to be at least one tree that stuck up above all the rest, and I didn't fancy running into it in the dark. I was being undignified enough already, clinging to this log like a monkey as it flew smoothly through the air, I didn't need to compound my bruised ego by running facefirst into a wall of bark and leaves.

____

A high, tortured shriek of superheated air rocketed up from the forest, and I glanced up a little, seeing the sharp brilliance of a flare explode to life above my head, washing the forest out into brief daytime radiance. This flare was followed by another, and another, in case we had missed the first two, before the flares finally stopped and I looked down. Finny had seen them and was changing route, and I leaned sideways again, steering my log that way as well.

____

At Finny's pace, which I was able to match with my magic log, we came up on what surely had to be the train station or depot or whatever within less than five minutes, and I maneuvered my log down through the treetops again, waiting until I was a foot or so from the ground before groaning and swinging off. I could hear faint rustles in the distance, hopefully from the others, and holstered my gun, taking out my combat knife again and using the leading edge to scrape off as much of the magic symbols as I could get to within this short period of time. I didn't dare leave evidence of magic for the inevitable search parties and follow-up investigations that would come after we cleared out of here: true, no professional magicians had interacted with Ciel as far as I knew, but after tonight my knowledge was going to come to an abrupt stop, and just leaving something I personally inscribed with magic runes laying around kinda smacked of quasi-fatal carelessness to me. Maybe it was all the fantasy books I read.

____

Runes mostly illegible and my knife in dire need of sharpening, I sheathed it again and rustled off through the undergrowth, listening and looking for the others. After a moment of deliberation I called a ball of magic into my hand –I didn't even need to do anything to make it glow besides hold it, since magic was essentially energy and all energy eventually generated not only heat, but light, if you tried hard enough.

____

Now reassured that nobody on my side would shoot me in the face, I proceeded a bit faster, and breathed a sigh of relief as I saw Finny standing on an overgrown path leading to a cave with a huge gate bolted across its entrance…though on closer inspection, the gate was a cleverly-hidden stone archway in the side of a hill. At this distance and this time of night, it was impossible to tell if the hill was part of a mountain or merely large enough to hide the physical evidence of the train's loading station.

____

"You guys make it through okay?" I asked as I stepped through the bushes, and Finny nodded as I walked over to them, extinguishing the light in my hand as Sieglinde made a small noise, having been staring at it, transfixed.

____

"I got a bit of a scratch on one cheek, but me and Lady Sullivan are fine." he said happily, lifting one hand to idly scratch at a cut on the left side of his face. "Now we just need to wait on the other two."

____

"Over here!"

____

I jumped a little and turned around, instinctively palming my gun, but relaxed before I even finished the motion to draw it out, seeing Mey-rin dashing towards us with Tanaka a few steps behind, her with her rifle over one shoulder and him with that sword –which I now saw was a katana, weirdly enough– in one hand, though it was sheathed now.

____

"Mister Snake sent one of his snakes to guide us in." Finny told us, and looking down, I spotted the snake in question, which flicked its tongue at us and slithered off. "Come on now!"

____

As we climbed over the barricade and dropped down into the tunnel behind, we quickly fell into single file, with Finny in the lead and Tanaka a step behind him, with Mey-rin and I bringing up the rear. This I understood: if someone attacked us from the front, Finny had the reflexes to leap aside and Tanaka had the resources to block or deflect the bullets, and the two of us had the range, while our erstwhile opponent was distracted with the two in front, to fill them full of holes. And of course, if someone was sneaking up on us behind, in this echoing space of twisted corridors we'd hear them coming long before they had their sights on us, giving us plenty of time to turn and mount a defense.

____

The door the snake eventually led us to was already ajar, and Finny nudged it further open with his toe, peeking out, before he perked up and moved in.

____

"Mister Bardroy!"

____

We came out on a spacious platform that, aside from the slumped and probably-dead bodies of several soldiers, held Bardroy, Snake, and some fat German dude I didn't know in-verse but knew to be Diedrich, a member of the Phantomhive network of allies and spies. There was also a train in the station, though train was perhaps a bit of a misnomer, as it only had the engine, an oddly-shaped car that was mostly just a container for coal as far as I could see, and the train equivalent of a flatbed: a single car that was basically nothing but a wooden floor on wheels.

____

"Finny! Everyone alive?" Bardroy called from over by the engine.

____

"Yes!" Finny replied as we scurried over, with the snake slithering up over Snake's arm as he reached for it.

____

"Keats seems to have been a useful guide, says Emily." he noted. To my slight dismay, he was covered in dirt and the telltale evidence of splinters, and his free arm was wrapped in a rough bandage above the shoulder. Bardroy was similarly marked and even bloodier, though Diedrich seemed much fresher than the both of them.

____

"Finny, open the door!" Bardroy called, taking command of the situation as he jabbed his thumb towards the closed metal doors blocking out this station at the head of the tracks. "Mey-rin, Snake, Aryana, you three make sure everything's oiled up 'n ready to go!"

____

"Yes, sir!" Mey-rin blurted, and we rushed towards the train as Finny put Sieglinde down on the flatbed.

____

"Lady Sullivan, please stay here. Take care of her, Mister Tanaka."

____

"Use these, grease up the wheels and hinges and anything that moves so it don't gall." Bardroy rattled off, handing down several bottles of a material I couldn't immediately recognize, capped with a hollow point to let the oil flow out. "If it does, we'll be lucky if the train only freezes up."

____

We rushed back, kneeling and sometimes even lying flat on the ground to make sure we got the oil in every place we could, leaping over the flatbed and hearing the wooden boards thump hollowly under our feet as we raced to the other side to do the same. Meanwhile Bardroy and Diedrich were shoveling like madmen, scooping up load after load of coal and dumping it into firebox as I heard the roar of heat inside increase steadily.

____

I heard Finny's distinctive grunt from down the line at the entrance to the rail station, then a sharp creaking snap, like someone had just cracked a tree in half.

____

"We're done oiling, we are!" Mey-rin called as we straightened up one after another, wiping frantic sweat off our brows. There was a rumbling _clank_ from up ahead as we watched Finny force open the large metal doors, pushing them to either side.

____

"The door's open!"

____

"Good!" Diedrich cried from the engine. "We're leaving now!"

____

A blast of soot and smoke roared from the funnels of said engine, and with a familiar metallic hiss, the train began to chug into motion. Snake, Mey-rin, and I hastily hopped out, suddenly made acutely aware of just how close our feet were to those moving wheels we had just been lubricating, and Mey-rin picked up her discarded rifle as we knelt over Sieglinde. Now at close proximity and in a lighted area for the first time since we changed in the kitchen, I noticed that she also had a shoulder-harness with two pistols inside, one under each arm.

____

"Get in, Finny!" Bardroy shouted, leaning out the left side of the engine and waving to him as Finny ran back from the entryway. Glancing over past the bulk of the coal-car, I saw the two of them grab hands, Bardroy working to hoist the gardener up onto the train with us as it slowly continued to pick up speed. Nobody said anything about Ciel and Sebastian, and quite frankly no one needed to, because we all shared the quiet, absolute conviction that even a moving train would be nothing much for them to catch up to.

____

_"MY LADY!"_

____

My head whipped around, along with all the others, to see Wolfram dashing in from one of the doors, stopping at the bottom of the steps inside one of the archways, breathing hard, as though he'd been running this entire time. He probably had, and he certainly looked the worse for wear: some injury on the upper right side of his face had clotted his sideburn with blood, and the left sleeve of his military jacket was soaked with more blood, though that was harder to tell with the darker color. The main clue was how awkwardly he held that arm, and how his glove on that side was also heavily marked with blood. He was covered in dark splatters that could be mud or blood or powder burns or anything, and his eyes were locked on Sieglinde.

____

_"Wolf?!"_ she cried back, and he bared his teeth and yanked out his gun, holding it with both hands no matter how much it seemed to pain him as he raised it in an unmistakable threat, taking aim directly at us.

____

"Lady Sullivan!" Finny cried as we all scrambled for her, Mey-rin and I hunching over her body and the others moving in as well.

____

**Blam!**

____

He fired, but missed all of us, and I glanced almost negligently over my shoulder, seeing the darkest-haired of Sieglinde's three castle servants –Grete, if I remembered correctly, and now in a military uniform rather than a medieval dress– stagger backwards, blood spurting from her gory left eye socket.

____

_"Wolfram…"_ she managed to hiss. _"You…trai…tor…"_

____

She collapsed with a _thud_ , and I nodded to myself. That could've gone ugly: I did remember this part, and though I didn't particularly remember what solider it had been, I _had_ remembered that Wolfram did a fake-out aggressive shooting at this point that ended up killing someone about to kill Sieglinde. If I'd reacted as I naturally would under these circumstances, and flung up a magical wall to block the bullet, Sieglinde could very well have taken _another_ bullet to the back of her head, or me, or Mey-rin, or any one of us, since the now-deceased Grete hadn't had time to take her shot before she'd died.

____

Wolfram stood there for a half-second, panting heavily as Sieglinde stared at him with shellshocked eyes.

____

_"Wolf…why…?"_

____

His arms fell down to his sides: he dropped the gun onto the ground. Wolfram then started bolting for the train, which was still picking up speed with every moment as it whooshed out of the station and into the open forest.

____

_"My lady! I'm sorry…for lying to you all this time!"_ he cried desperately as he leaped off the platform and kept running on the tracks themselves. _"Despise us if you like! You need never forgive us!"_

____

Sieglinde crawled hastily to the back edge of the train, which kept going faster, by now easily able to outpace the running man even with his level of athleticism. Wolfram was starting to show the strain, too, panting and wheezing but refusing to look away or even attempt to slow down as he futilely reached out.

____

_"But! My lady! You! You are-"_

____

A gunshot roared across the empty forest, and Wolfram looked down as he stumbled to a swift halt, barely managing to bring a hand to the red flower erupting from his chest before he tumbled down and aside, revealing the enraged, somewhat singed Grete behind him, who was covered head to foot in hideous burns and had something approaching madness in her clouded-over eyes, gun outstretched.

____

_"Traitor…"_ she panted out around a snarl as the rest of us stared, too appalled by the suddenness of Wolfram's collapse to do anything. _"DIE! Emerald Witch!"_

____

_"Oh, dear. It would seem a stray ingredient has found its way out of the oven."_ Sebastian sighed as he appeared directly behind her, Ciel on one arm. The demon then thrust a knife into her jugular. _"The temperature must not have been high enough."_

____

Hilde collapsed in a spray of blood as Sebastian and Ciel started to move forward, and Sieglinde finally snapped out of her shock and began to scream for her caretaker.

____

"Wolf! Wolf!"

____

_"No, Lady Sullivan!"_ Mey-rin gasped, holding her back when Sieglinde seemed prepared to leap off the train and crawl back to him.

____

Wolfram stirred, managing to lift his head up as his hands clenched, bracing himself on one arm as he reached forward.

____

_"My lady…"_ he coughed, blood spurting from his lips, before they formed a terrible, resigned smile, tears streaming down his face. _"You're…not a witch. You're just an ordinary girl."_

____

He collapsed, facedown, on the track as Sieglinde screamed his name.

____

"WOOOOOOOLF!"

____

Something passed between Ciel and Sebastian, and my tense body relaxed as the butler bent to scoop up Wolfram as well, running lightly towards us as Mey-rin and I quickly scooted back with Sieglinde in tow.

____

Sebastian quickly laid Wolfram out and set Ciel down on his other side as Sieglinde lurched over her butler, clutching his hand and crying.

____

"Wolf! Wolf! WOLF!"

____

There was a short, full-body spasm, and then Wolfram's eyes weakly cracked open.

____

_"My…lady…?"_ he whispered faintly. His head lolled to the side, looking out over his other arm and down the track as we rapidly continued to chug away from the facility, which was now lost to side. Confusion and shame and disorientation warred for victory in his hazy eyes. _"I –I…am…"_

____

He interrupted himself with several racking, deep coughs as Sieglinde flinched and bent further over him.

____

_"Don't speak!"_

____

_"Herr Wolfram."_ Sebastian said as Wolfram's breathing continued again, but now with an alarming wheeze. _"A butler is not permitted to die in advance of his master –so says the veteran butler amongst us."_

____

"Sebastian, heat up a knife red-hot!" Ciel snapped, throwing out his arm. "Mey-rin! Get out all the cloth and water you can find!"

____

Sebastian stood upright, the lone one of us confident enough to do so on this fast-moving, rocking train bed, and hurried quickly to the other end of the train, leaping over the coal box and presumably continuing on towards the engine. Snake was moving without being asked, quickly unbuttoning Wolfram's jacket and white undershirt and spreading them open, making me wince at the gaping hole in Wolfram's upper ribs. The bullet had gone right through him, which to my limited understanding was rather bad. After all, a bullet that was stuck in you somewhere was a bullet with only one exit wound and thus less damage, whereas a bullet that went in and out tore open everything in its path and didn't do a titch to stifle the bleeding afterwards.

____

I could be wrong. I didn't have any lessoning in first aid beyond "stop the bleeding at all costs," which I guessed was what we were about to do. After all, according to movies and common sense it was entirely possible to sear wounds closed with a red-hot implement, albeit excruciatingly painful and quite literally scarring.

____

Still, beggars, choosers, etc.

____

It wasn't like we had a medic right now, and between him dying horribly and leaving Sieglinde alone in this cruel cruel world _or_ having a sick burn scar on his abdomen, I figured Wolfram would be okay with us choosing the latter option.

____

And if he wasn't, well, he'd be alive to bitch about it and for that he should be grateful.

____

Given as Sebastian was probably heating the knife in the firebox of the train, which was incandescent with heat as it powered the train going forward, it did not take long at all for him to come carefully moving back, glowing red-orange knife in hand.

____

"Hold him down so he doesn't thrash around." Ciel ordered as we gathered around the wheezing Wolfram, Snake pinning his injured arm. "And gag him so he doesn't bit his tongue."

____

"Yes, sir!" Tanaka agreed crisply, grabbing his other arm as I shuffled backwards, before grabbing Wolfram's shoulders and pushing all of my bodyweight there, holding him firmly as Mey-rin jammed a strip of bandaging between his teeth and tied it behind his head tightly.

____

_"N-no, Wolf! You can't die!"_ Sieglinde sobbed over him as we carried out these lightning-fast preparations within a few moments, and Ciel grabbed her by the chin.

____

"Pull yourself together!" he snapped, pulling her face around. "It's the duty of the Emerald Witch to protect the people of the village. You said as much yourself! This man here is all that's left of your villagers. You have neither magic nor practice of miracles in the outside world. So now you're going to save him," He grabbed her hand and force the handle of the red-hot knife into it. "-with your own hands!"

____

Sieglinde clutched the knife nervously, looking over to a heavily breathing Wolfram as Snake, Tanaka, and I held him down, gag jammed in his mouth. She gritted her teeth.

____

"Wolf…"

____

She brandished the knife in both hands, glaring at him fiercely as the remnants of tears and snot glittered on her grimy face.

____

_"If you die here, I will never, ever forgive you, not for as long as I live, do you hear!?"_

____

His eyes widened, then closed with a feeling like relief, and under Ciel's guidance, Sieglinde pressed the knife down directly on his wound.

____

Unsurprisingly, tough German soldier or not, Wolfram's entire body seized up, attempting to arch and buck under our hands as it instinctively sought to avoid the source of pain. A strangled, hoarse noise broke from his lips between the gag, more subdued and less screamy than I would have expected, but maybe that was because his jaw was clenching so hard his teeth _would_ have been driven into his tongue if not for the gag, and all the air had rushed out of him at the first moment the knife touched him.

____

She snatched the knife away after a moment, then Ciel motioned for her to press it down again. I got the feeling that this was something to do with maybe burning Wolfram too much, since Ciel kept telling Mey-rin to wipe away the blood and wash the site clean. After about the fifth or sixth press of the knife, Wolfram was definitely screaming, and I was actually driven to kneel directly on his broad shoulders, which had I still been in a dress –and if his eyes had actually been open– would've given Wolfram the Victorian equivalent of a very nice pantyshot as he writhed and choked out screams beneath the combined weight of me, Snake, and Tanaka, who were also kneeling on his arms and shoving down on his torso, trying to keep him still.

____

He passed out somewhere around the time we got to sealing the entry wound on his back, which was a relief to all three of us as well as Sieglinde, since we could stop kneeling on the poor man and sit back, helping Mey-rin clean him off and ensure we didn't sear the flesh around the wound while cauterizing it. This was a tricky, ticklish job, not the least of which because even though he wasn't moving anymore, it was still hard as fuck to _see_ , since there weren't any lights on the train and daybreak was still just a paler suggestion near the very bottom of the eastern horizon. And even when the sun did start rising, it wouldn't help us that much more, since we were still surrounded by trees.

____

Also, the smell of scorched flesh and burning blood at close range was making my stomach turn, not to mention the wet, sticky feel of it all over my fingers as I swiped at his chest and back, feeling more dribbles of blood soak slick and hot over my hands. The sky continued to slowly lighten, enough to see each other more clearly, but not quite enough to extinguish the fear of slipping and perhaps sticking my finger in Wolfram's gunshot, or of Sieglinde missing my hand in the dark and pressing the knife into _me_ before I moved away.

____

Finally, though, our smudged makeshift cloths came away clean, and Mey-rin began passing Sieglinde bandages, which between the lot of us we managed to weave around and under Wolfram's torso without shifting him too much, since we weren't any of us sure of just how sealed those gunshot wounds were, and unwilling to find out the ugly way by popping them open again.

____

But we got there, and even wrapped his left arm in some extra bandages, since he appeared to have been shot through that wrist as well.

____

"The bleeding has stopped for now. If we can get him the proper treatment somewhere, he should make it." Sebastian said as the train chuffed onwards, before going down on one knee and patting her shoulder. "You have fulfilled your duty most admirably, my lady."

____

Sieglinde flopped back onto her haunches, still dressed in Ciel's trousers, vest, and shirt –and then she began to cry from sheer relief, wailing loudly as she bent over Wolf, clutching at him as she cried. Mey-rin adjusted her glasses and smiled fondly as Snake wiped his hands on one of the only moderately-clean cloths, and I sighed, sitting back more naturally as well and vaguely flicking my wrists, trying to throw off whatever blood still clung to my hands, before I scooted forward a little, not liking having my back to the very far end of the moving train now that panic had subsided and I could actually pay attention to that minor detail.

____

"Taking him to a hospital is out, since they'll track us down." Ciel said, glancing over as Diedrich climbed ponderously over the coal box and stomped over. "Diedrich, let us use your hideout."

____

"Even if I refuse, you'll come anyway, won't you?" he snapped. "Good grief! Like father, like son…"

____

He continued to mumble in an aggrieved tone of voice as Sebastian took off his jacket, placing it over Ciel's shoulders.

____

"You telling me to retrieve him was rather a surprise." he murmured, too quiet for the crying Sieglinde to hear.

____

Ciel shrugged. "The outside world has many monsters far more troublesome than wolfmen. She could use a guard dog at her side, don't you think? Besides which…" He glanced warily off into the distance. "She is my insurance. Against being eliminated for knowing too much, that is."

____

Sebastian huffed in amusement, holding a hand to his chin.

____

"I see. But to require insurance when you have a devil of a butler like me in your employ…you really are such a worrywart."

____

Ciel _snorted_.

____

"Don't be absurd." he said. "I trust you least of all."

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: June 16th, 2020, 1.04 AM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: June 15th, 2020, 11.56 PM USA Central Time


	64. That Butler, Puzzle Pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All respect to the original culture around this and the people who practiced it, looking up the process of foot binding honestly gives me the willies. Like from a personal standpoint its super gross. Apparently, they tried to lose toes on purpose sometimes, by like sticking glass into the bindings to cause infections to make 'em drop off. Toenails would ingrow and cause more infections, so sometimes they'd be peeled right off to remove that risk. Like far be it from me to tell people from different cultures how to live their lives, but that still doesn't change my visceral reaction of EW when it comes to mutilating yourself for a sense of beauty, especially when it has debilitating effects on the rest of your body. My line in the sand is drawn at boob enhancement surgery, and even then, I'm squicked. 
> 
> Also, the book Arya references about learning how to cure seasickness with ginger is _Vampire Plagues: France, 1850_ , the second of a three-part series about the Mayan bat god Camazotz actually being a vampire.
> 
> Anyways, I'm gonna try real hard to get this fic finished by Friday, since that's my birthday and what a 21st birthday present it'll be, completing a five-year fic. You'll probably get some more weird hours of posting as I frantically work to write everything that needs to be said and done.

_Arya's POV:_

As hard as it was to sleep in the open on the moving bed of a train, I did crawl my way over towards the middle and then curl up after we left the forest entirely, since I'd barely gotten a lick of sleep over these past two days and I'd been operating on a vaguely combat setting for most of the night, meaning an exhausted collapse wasn't too far away for me if I didn't anticipate it in time for a hasty nap.

Hence, flopping down as out of the way of the others but as far from the edges as I could manage, since falling from a train moving at this speed would be unpleasant at best and fatal at worst, and trying to sleep on a flat wooden surface that was rocking back and forth and vibrating softly. Not as hard as you might think, given my state of absolute exhaustion –my body was just about prepared to fall asleep on anything that didn't run away fast enough, and a mostly-flat surface with no painful bumps felt almost as good as a featherbed at this point.

Adorably enough, I even felt Sieglinde nestle in next to me at one point, half-waking me vaguely from my doze until I realized there were no problems and sleep ruthlessly yanked me back under its iron weight.

When we arrived at wherever we were going, Mey-rin poked the both of us awake, and I groggily grabbed Sieglinde and staggered after the others, squinting against the now-bright daylight as I vaguely followed them to wherever we were supposed to be. Finny had Wolfram half-collapsed over his shoulders, and all the rest of us were covered in dirt, bruises, blood, or some unholy combination of all three, not to mention soot blacks from the train. The only ones of us completely untouched were Sebastian and Sieglinde, and really, since this had undoubtably been the most traumatizing night of her young life, she was pretty beat-up too, just on the inside where it didn't show.

Things were said in German by what I presumed was butler and some other staff as we staggered into what I vaguely recognized as some kind of manor house or other type of rich-person residence, but I was too tired to even try and mentally translate what was being said.

I did get shaken out of my sleep-deprived stupor a little as we walked into the main entrance of what was now obviously a castle, complete with ornate architecture and luxurious decorations, along with the other servants, who oohed and ahhed at the expansive –and expensive– space.

"This place is huge~!" Finny chimed as Mey-rin adjusted her glasses, gawking without shame.

"This castle is but one in the possession of the Weizsäcker barony." the presumably-butler said to us, smiling kindly. "It is rather small compared to the principal residence, but please do make yourselves at home."

"Rather small?!" the others squawked.

"You're actually a sheltered young master, aren't you?" Ciel deadpanned to Diedrich, who scoffed and folded his arms, glaring at the tiny earl.

"Well, isn't that the pot and the kettle."

A bevy of maids and footmen descended upon our group, fussing over us, putting Wolfram on a stretcher, bringing bandages and first aid supplies and taking away the two large bags that we had managed to pack.

"Those who have been injured, this way!" one called, waving us towards another room. Sieglinde looked at Wolfram in concern as they hoisted up his stretcher, and I yawned, my jaw stretching, before blinking wearily.

"Y'wanna go after him?"

"If its not too much trouble…" Sieglinde mumbled, fidgeting anxiously with the hem of Ciel's cloak.

"Mm'kay."

I turned and began to shuffle, zombie-like, after the footmen with the stretcher, relying more on Sieglinde's anxious squirms and heightened breaths to alert me of the fact I was about to run into something, rather than bothering to look up.

"Are you injured, madame and milady?" one of the footmen asked, finally noticing us as they got the others into the room, and Sieglinde squirmed in my arms again.

"Oh, erm. That gentleman on the stretcher is my butler, so…"

"He has been most excellently attended to." the man replied soothingly. "We shall continue to inform you of his condition once the physician arrives, but for now I believe we can say that he shall pull through."

Sieglinde sighed in relief.

"Is there anything the two of you require?"

Sieglinde blinked. "Oh, um…"

She looked up at me.

"Bed." I said groggily.

"…Beg pardon?" the footman asked cautiously, but my drowsy, vacant expression remained unchanged.

"Beeeeeeeeeed."

"My companion is in urgent need of rest." Sieglinde tried to explain, clutching my sleeve nervously. "In fact, she may very well collapse at any moment."

This was obviously a problem for her as well as me, since if I went down, there was a very real chance I'd squash her, since Sieglinde couldn't really walk on her own at all, and I was exponentially heavier than she was. Not that I would ever hurt her, even by accident.

"S'okay." I patted her vaguely somewhere on the head. Hopefully her head and not her face. "If I fall, I'll fall backwards so you have something to land on."

_***Time Skip***_

Luckily, a bed was procured for me –or rather I was led to one– before anything disastrous occurred, and after confirming Sieglinde felt safe enough to be carried away by a footman, I slept all the way into the afternoon on the luxurious silky sheets. In fact, I slept so hard that when I did wake up, there were red lines where my skin had been pressed into the folds of fabric and I was somehow still a little groggy. _That_ level of deep sleep.

Flopping upright, I cracked my neck a little and yawned, sliding out of the admirably comfy bed –apparently a palatial home meant palatial comfort– and straightening up, dusting myself off. Unlike the others, the only mess I had to contend with was bits of bark and dirt from the log I had laid on, and smacking my shirt and pants got most of that off. Hopefully I hadn't messed up the bed too much, but then again, right now it was just a light dusting of grime on some parts of my clothes, which hopefully hadn't made life that much more difficult for the maids. Having shared living space with one for the past half-year, I wasn't about to be a dick to service workers, even more so than usual common courtesy demanded.

Sleep taken care of, I decided to wander the castle in search of the kitchen –and food– or until I ran into one of the others, whichever came last.

Still, this place was gorgeous. When I had previously lived in Germany, it was just in a pretty normal private home and one time at a hotel, and there was nothing near this level of architectural oomph. Granted, I couldn't tell a buttress from a mullion, but I had eyes and those eyes saw some lovely, well-maintained, and historical castle aesthetic, whether or not I actually knew the name for what I was seeing right now. It looked neat! You didn't have to be a building buff to be able to tell _that_!

Anyways, other than the fact the kitchen was almost certainly going to be on ground level, I hadn't the foggiest idea of where it'd be. It probably wasn't going to be towards the front of the castle either, since the large entrance hall and parlors and billiard rooms going off of it were all public domain, and the kitchen in this kind of estate was the sort of _peon_ stuff that no guests or masters wanted to learn about. I'd learned a thing or two about Victorian culture from my stint here: status came from being above common necessities. Real high society never had to use an implement, or anything really, for _more than one purpose_. Such an action was plebian, rough-hewn.

Obviously, if you had the money and manners, you never once needed to reuse anything, and like in so many societies, money was power.

Hence, changing clothes a dozen times a day for a dozen different purposes, if you were wealthy and refined enough –a morning gown for eating breakfast and directing servants if you were the lady of a household, a different gown for lunch, another gown to make or receive calls, but then a tea gown for having tea, going to a tea party, or hosting a tea party…walking gowns, tennis gowns, dinner gowns, hunting outfits, riding habits, and of course, ball gowns. If you _truly_ had the money where your mouth would be, not a single one of these dresses would ever be worn twice, either. If you couldn't afford that, you'd augment what you had however you could, so at least it didn't _look_ the same.

The sheer wastefulness of it made my head spin, but then, that was the eternal problem of the wage and class gap, I supposed. People starving in the world and these rich elite were worrying over appearing twice in the same outfit. Ugh.

Anyways, Victorians were so concerned with keeping reality at bay that they warded it off by burying and hiding the servants' quarters, activities, and even facilities as much as humanly possible, which was why our part of the Phantomhive manor back home was so barren and plain, and also mostly at or below the ground floor and at the back of the manor. Other people who could afford servants generally put them in the attic, occasionally right underneath the eaves. servants were supposed to operate silently, invisibly, and in the general lay of things Sebastian was the only one of us Ciel should really come into regular contact with at all, since the butler and housekeeper were at the top of the household hierarchy, with the cook in a nebulous place slightly below and slightly equal to them both. The rest of us would do our thing, and if something went wrong we reported it to Sebastian, who fixed it, and only in the most extreme and dire of situations would he bring an issue to Ciel's attention. We were supposed to be cogs in the machine, automatons that merely did our duties and kept out of sight.

Of course, since Ciel had such a miniscule household –if Sebastian had been human there was probably no way we'd be able to keep everything in order– there was much less of a hierarchy proper, even though we all deferred to Sebastian. And, I had a sneaking suspicion, since Ciel was so very traumatized by what happened to his family, he didn't want to fill the manor with a gaggle of workers. No, he wanted to handpick each and every one of us, sounding us out for treachery or issues, as well as how useful we could be in terms of an attack, but of course, since he was so very focused on quality over quantity, there were only seven people, including myself, that worked in the manor and estate grounds around it right now.

Now, in a proper household like this quasi-castle, the servants _did_ keep out of sight as they went about their duties, unless directly needed or summoned, so it wasn't as if I could pounce on someone in the hall and ask directions.

Dangit.

On the _other_ hand, a small Sieglinde looking with wistful sadness out the window was a perfect target.

Wait, what?

I blinked and did a mental double-take, before retracing my last step and turning to face her, walking briskly across the hallway until I could fling myself down on the window seat beside her. The cushion was very thick and soft, and she only bounced a little as my weight came down, though it was enough to jostle her out of her funk.

"Thinking on things?" I asked, and she made a small noise, nodding a little, before looking back towards the window and the vista outside.

"Wolfram's gonna be fine." I told her firmly.

Sieglinde was silent for a moment, then she spoke.

"Do you know that because you're from the future?"

I jolted in shock, flinching back, wobbling, and finally righting myself in a weird conglomeration of flailing and shuffling and leaning backwards against the window.

"Wh-what?" I squeaked convincingly.

"You knew what the radar was by name…and you were surprised that it was here." Sieglinde said, looking away from the window again with wide, inquisitive green eyes. "Why should you be surprised at the existence of something that you knew was real? And you said when Ciel and Sebastian were surprised about it, that you thought it hadn't been invented 'yet.' Why would you say something like that unless you knew about something from the future?

"Eh." I choked, trying to think of something logical, believable, and not the truth. "Um…"

Sieglinde raised an unimpressed eyebrow at me.

"Okay, fine. Maybe a little." I admitted, whining to myself a little. "But its not like you think!"

Now Sieglinde just looked interested, and I rubbed the back of my head nervously. Damn. Maybe Ciel was right when he'd chewed me out for carelessly stating things.

…okay, maybe he'd definitely been right and I'd screwed up big-time. Luckily, this was nothing that couldn't be fixed with some quick exposition.

"Okay, so, Ciel and Sebastian already know this, but you have to _promise_ me not to tell any of the other servants." I began. She nodded quickly.

"I'm from the future, but not the future of this world. Um…see, a bit over a year ago, I was messing around with a magic spell, sort've as a joke. Like, I hadn't actually expected it to work."

"You should never enter into a magic work without being fully committed!" Sieglinde squawked, frantically bopping me with both hands as I carefully fended her off. "That's –I mean, er…"

"No, that actually is totally correct magical proceedings." I told her as she moved from her instinctive, trained defense to the realization that everything she had been taught was fake, and she trailed off. "You really shouldn't go into magic without knowing what you're doing. Don't call something unless you mean to invite it, don't invite something unless you know how to deal with it, so on and so forth."

Sieglinde nodded rapidly, making me smile a little at how adorable she was being at this moment.

"Uh, but yeah, I didn't know that then, and I basically got sucked into a different dimension."

"Dimension?"

"Um, like alternate world." I made vague shapes with my hands. "Like, I was still on planet Earth, and it was still in my time, but there were things that were –different. The countries of the world had, like, avatars, individuals who physically represented the culture, spirit, and people of their nation."

Sieglinde blinked. "What was Germany like?" came the slightly unexpected but natural enough question.

I frowned and rocked back against the window, humming to myself a little as I thought about it.

"Hmmm…strict, rule-oriented, very persnickety –er, very focused on cleaning, loyal, and bakey."

"Bakey?"

"Cakes, cookies, sweets, even candy a couple times…" I ticked them off on my fingers. "He was a baker, though to look at him ya wouldn't think it. One of those big buff blonds, you get the idea. Kinda like Wolfram."

Which did make me wonder. Manga authors did visual clichés with hairstyles, like, a lot –the spiky paler hair for the arrogant blowhard, the long loose ponytail for the flirtatious one, the nondescript bowl cut for the nerd, maybe slightly slicked back sometimes, maybe sometimes just teasing at an undercut…it was a thing. Germany and Greenhill, my prefect at Weston, looked damn near identical, or certainly at least related, and France and Redmond weren't that far away from each other either. Was there some sort of reference in manga or Japanese culture that I was missing, or what?

Erm, anyways.

"He had a brother named Prussia, and he was…wild. Very loud, very enthusiastic, very arrogant. He and this other guy, uh, Romano, South Italy, they were kinda like my best friends. A lot of stuff happened, and we fought evil body-doubles of all the nations, and I got attached to this other guy, Britain. See, since it was gonna take him such a long time to comb through his magic books to send me home, everybody just kinda figured he might as well teach me how to do magic on the way to defend myself, you know? Since one of the other bad guys was like this super evil magician who absolutely hated my guts. You ever see a guy with strawberry blond hair and blue eyes in your mirror or a reflection?"

I vehemently crossed both arms in an X over my chest.

" _Run_. His name's Oliver Kirkland, and he's Britain's evil body double or whatever. He also goes by England, and the dude's a cannibal, a bloodthirsty maniac, and also like diabolically clever. Do not touch, do not interact, do not trust, _run_. Tell Wolfram that too."

Sieglinde nodded quickly, looking nervous.

"Anyways, Britain and I kicked his aaaabsolutely horrible self," Bad PG save. "-and sent him and all the other evil body doubles, minus one who was the double of Prussia and on our side, to another dimension that didn't have anything to do with any of us. Then Britain tried to send me home, only it musta gone through wrong, because I ended up here."

I scratched the back of my neck.

"And yeah, you're right, I am technically from the future, 'cause here's about two hundred or so years in the past, give or take a little. Mostly take. I think its actually close to 150. _Anyways_ , yes I am from the future, but it's a different future in a different world, and right now I'm trying to get back home by arranging a magic circle just like the one Britain used, but hopefully one that works. But don't tell the other servants any of this, because again, they don't know. They think I'm the American branch manager for Ciel's company."

Sieglinde nodded again, this time solemn.

"How close are you to finishing?" she asked, and I groaned loudly, rocking back on my heels again and bonking the back of my head against the glass.

"Uggggh. I've got everything down that I need except how to actually power the da…arn thing as I use it." I explained. "Being completely honest, I kinda hope that maybe if I teach you how to properly use magic, you can help me figure it out."

Sieglinde hummed, swinging her tiny legs.

"I can definitely teach you the same basics I know –how to manipulate raw magical energy, how to channel it into something, how to find the runes you need for something, and once we get to England I can hook you up with the same bookstore I use to get whatever research you need or want. I'm _definitely_ going to need to hook you up with Britain, if only 'cause I'm _hopefully_ going to be leaving before too terribly long, and obviously I don't wanna skip out and just leave you in the middle of your education."

Sieglinde was silent for a moment, and then she reached out to grasp the loose fabric of my trousers.

"I want to help you." she said. "I…trust you."

_Must not glomp must not glomp must not glomp this is an emotional moment for her do not **ruin** it for her-_

"Do you think I can use magic…real magic…to…"

Sieglinde trailed off and swung her legs again, and I looked down to her misshapen feet. If I remembered correctly, she had talked about her bound feet being her pride and joy to Wolfram as proof she was descended from the original Emerald Witch, but now, now that she knew that that all had been a lie, those feet were a symbol of the deception that had been worked on her all her life…as well as a very physical reminder of how her own mother had ruthlessly crippled her in order to facilitate that illusion.

"Um." I scratched my cheek. "I dunno. I'm pretty sure? I don't know how foot binding works, but like, even in the normal course of things, you're pretty young, and at this age you have a lot more flexibility when it comes to healing from injuries. That's why they start foot binding pretty young, I think, because if they do it when you're a kid then your body gets used to it and actually like grows and adapts around those lines. Whatever we might do, we might have to…break 'em again. The bones, in your feet. To like straighten them out."

She looked vaguely nauseous.

"But that's a question for someone more expert than me! You wanna come with while I try to contact Britain?"

"I thought you said he was in a different dimension?" Sieglinde said with an adorable tilt of her head and a raised brow.

"Eh, yeah. But I'm a magician and I can probably patch him through for like five minutes or so! Probably! I'm almost totally sure I could do it!" I said, standing upright and clenching my fists encouragingly.

Sieglinde looked up at me, deadpan.

"You're not being very reassuring."

"MAYBE I'VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO DO IT BEFORE, BUT MAYBE I CAN DO IT NOW!"

"Aryaaaa…"

_***Time Skip***_

One quick diversion later, carrying Sieglinde piggyback, we had snatched a ladies hand mirror and settled onto the bed of my guest room, mirror held equidistant between us.

"Okay, so one of the most important things about being a magician is the will." I told Sieglinde, who was vibrating quietly with excitement. "The reason I've never been able to make this work on my own is because even though I know my teacher and I vaguely know the frequency of the world he's in, my willpower's just not strong enough to punch through dimensions. But between the two of us, we should be able to manage it long enough for him to send us back some way of staying in more permanent contact with you."

Sieglinde nodded vigorously.

"Right, now you see this thing I drew on the other side of the mirror?"

I turned it over in our hands, showing her the master-sigil for the _Hetalia_ world that I had drawn on the shiny golden surface of the mirror's back.

"That's something that my teacher used to signify his entire world. Dimension. Whatever, you get the idea. Now, I wrote that on the back of the mirror 'cause a focused will isn't always enough when you're dealing with magic. You need something to focus it, like, uh, you ever see a magnifying glass? A glass that focuses light?"

She nodded.

"Yeah, just like that. Magicians like us use pentagrams and things of that nature, magic signs, magic runes, magic languages, to specify what we want in more precise and delicate terms. When I healed myself of the mustard gas, I was imbuing magic with my will and sending it through my body, but that's clumsy and takes way longer. If I had the right kind of magic sigil like this, I could've just sent it through my body and healed myself in like a snap. For big stuff, really big stuff like punching through worlds, you need a sigil like this, or else you don't even have a whisper of a chance at success."

"So we will be sending our willpower into this mirror, and by using the sigil to power it, we'll be able to contact your teacher?" Sieglinde asked curiously, and I nodded.

"Yup. Exactly. Now, there might be some colored lights and stuff, but its not going to be anything that'll hurt us. Magic colors tend to…take after their magicians, I guess? Like generally, most of the stuff I end up doing turns out to be yellow light, just sort've because, and my teacher Britain's was mostly green and yellow too. Norway's tended to be blue, and Romania's was violet. That creepy guy Oliver's was blue and pink and sometimes magenta."

"I thought color was symbolically important in magic?" Sieglinde asked uncertainly.

"Eh…yes and no." I said, wiggling my hand and hoping I wasn't making this too confusing for her. "Spells, stuff that you conjure up with specific invocations and sigils, they tend to be colored in regards to the nature of the spell itself. So like, for things like fire, you'd get red and orange and yellow and ochre, and for things like metal, you'd get black and grey and orange, maybe. Things that you just involuntarily _do_ , like with just manifesting raw magic, that's stuff that's more invested in your soul, personally, so that tends to get colored by you rather than the type of magic you're doing, since you aren't really doing any type of magic at all."

"Are there any bad colors?" Sieglinde asked. I shook my head quickly.

"Nah. Or, well, yeah, but the thing with colors is that there's only so many, and they can have multiple meanings." I told her, smiling a little as I remembered asking that question myself to my teacher and him giving me almost this exact answer. "Like, stereotypically black is associated with "bad," which is more than a bit racist, to be honest. Black means foundation, the starting point, in alchemy, like we talked about, and some cultures have the concept of the "divine dark" from which all things are made, peaceful and eternal. Red can mean violence and blood, but it can also mean rejuvenation and life. Its all kinda dependent on context."

"Context?" Sieglinde blinked, and I smiled sheepishly. I kept forgetting she was new to English, and also a kid.

"Uh, the things surrounding it, the situation and underlying reasons. The thing is with magic, don't trust the color, trust the _feeling_ you have about it. Magic is energy, and the thing with magic energy in particular is it's carried by intent, and manifested in a way we can feel _by_ the intent of the magician who's using it. So, like right now, we're only trying to make contact with a single person that I know, trust, and respect. So if you get a bad feeling, drop the mirror, drop the spell, drop _everything_ and tell me to do it too, because we shouldn't even be getting a smidgen –ah, a tiny little bit– of a bad feeling. It might mean that someone's hijacking us, or there's some kind of trap, or, well…a bad feeling shouldn't be here."

Sieglinde nodded vehemently, firming her chin.

"So," I settled my legs a little more firmly, both of our knees pressing against each other as I turned the mirror back over. "We're gonna focus on Britain, okay? My teacher: grumpy, normal blond, green eyes, bit of a _tsundere_ –that means he tries to hide the fact he likes things even when he totally does. He loves tea, and fairies, and his familiar Flying Mint Bunny."

"Bunny…" Sieglinde muttered, staring intently at the surface of the mirror as she gripped it with white knuckles.

"He's always starting fistfights with the avatar of France, and even though he snaps at everybody, he's actually really loyal and fiercely protective to the people he cares about. His name is Arthur Kirkland. You got a feeling for what he's like now?"

"Yes." Sieglinde whispered excitedly.

"Okay, now we're going to focus our will." I murmured to her. "Visualize the energy you have. You're alive, you're vibrant with life, and there's all that energy inside you, pushing, growing. It's your life force, and it's a good thing, it's a helping thing, it's a fixing thing. Its _you_ , and you're wonderful and beautiful and _alive_ , and because of that, you have a magic that no one can take away. That magic's in you and how you live. It's the energy of your soul…and we're gonna push it down, okay? We're going to direct that tingling feeling you get in your blood…lead it down your veins…into your hands…"

Sieglinde exhaled softly, closing her eyes, and once she did I swallowed nervously, hoping that I wasn't messing this up. The responsibility of teaching had never really been imposed upon me before Sieglinde, but now I realized that if I didn't deliver the way I'd promise, I could very well crush her heart and shatter her entire worldview. I _had_ to get this right, and the only way I knew to awaken someone's magic potential was the way Britain had taught me shorthand, by visualization exercises and, something I couldn't mimic, using a complex magic spell.

"Pushing…pushing…you're draining that energy into your fingers, your hands, holding it there…we don't want it to leave, not yet, just pool it like water…keep building it there, focus on the feeling its giving you…"

From the look of intense focus on her face, Sieglinde was doing exactly that, and her eyes soon snapped open, darting down to her hands, and I sighed in unmitigated relief as I saw them glowing a vibrant green.

"Arya." Sieglinde whispered excitedly. "It's working! My –I have magic!"

"Of course you do." I said with a fond smile. "And now that you recognize that feeling, you'll be able to replicate it, yes?"

"Yes…" she said, still marveling over the way her magic was slowly manifesting and gathering around her fingers. "Its…tingly!"

"It usually is." I said complacently. "Okay, now we're gonna focus that magic outside you, okay? Think of the sigil I have on the underside of the mirror and give your magic a good hard _push_ , thinking of my teacher. Feed that energy you're gathering into the mirror, into the sigil, into your idea of him. _Believe_ we're going to do it, that he's going to show up on the mirror so we can talk to him. And if you feel tired, you cut yourself off, okay? I don't want you to overextend and start feeding your actual life force into this."

"I will." Sieglinde promised faithfully.

"Okay. Here we go!"

We both gripped the mirror a little tighter and _focused_ on it, both our hands glowing now as we coaxed our magic up and sent it into the sigil and the mirror, thinking of my teacher Britain, thinking of reaching him, of communicating with him, of finding him across worlds and dimensions.

After a few moments of concentrated silence, the surface of the mirror shimmered, making Sieglinde gasp excitedly, before it resolved into a tiny oval snapshot of Britain's dining room.

"Did it work?" Sieglinde asked, and I nodded.

"Uh, we definitely made it to his house. Hang on –uh, and I mean that literally. Don't let go." I then held the mirror to my face, careful not to dislodge her hands, and yelled into it. "BRITAIN!"

There was a faint and far-off sound from the other end, making Sieglinde gasp and squirm in repressed glee.

_"Wha-"_

Footsteps sounded, the sound echoing weirdly and faintly, and I grinned with no small sense of relief as Britain walked into the mirror's frame of sight, blinking once and jerking back in constarnation.

_"WHA-?! Aryana!"_

"Yup." I answered. "Sorry about the haircut, I had to infiltrate a boy's college and my hair's still growing out.

_"Never mind that –why in god's good name are you contacting me through a **mirror**!?"_

I sweatdropped. "Well…"

"Is that him?!" Sieglinde cried eagerly, climbing over my lap while keeping her hands in contact with the mirror at all times, then pausing with a nonplussed blink. "Why does he have such monstrously large eyebrows?"

 _"AND WHO THE BLEEDING HELL ARE YOU?!"_ Britain shrieked in a combination of shock and rage, reeling back from the mirror's surface.

"I'm Sieglinde Sullivan, Arya's new apprentice." Sieglinde chirped, unperturbed by his sudden explosion of temper. I glared at him as I wrapped an arm protectively over her middle: there would be no insulting of my adorable German marshmallow!

Britain glared at me through the mirror's surface as he stepped back closer to his reflection, breathing heavily from the lingering surprise. His heavy eyebrows twitched, along with his mouth, as he very obviously struggled to find a way of expressing himself without swear words that would burn Sieglinde's poor innocent ears to a crisp.

 _"Might I ask WHY an **apprentice herself** is teaching magic?"_ he finally seethed pointedly.

"No one else to teach." I said with a shrug. "And that's sorta why I called you…I can teach her the same basics you taught me, sure, but if she's ever gonna be a competent magician in her own right, she needs to learn from a graduated professional…aka, you."

Britain tugged his lapels a little straighter: long experience living in his household told me that this subtle preening meant my oblique flattery had been successful.

_"Yes, well, I suppose I understand. Still, can't we find a less…alarming means of communication?"_

"It's 1889." I deadpanned. "If you can tell me something that'll work, by all means, go nuts."

_"Urk."_

"Yeah, my point exactly. On that note, since I'll hopefully be booking it within a few months, Sieglinde needs a way to stay in contact with you, since I wouldn't trust any of the other magicians in this world as far as I could throw them."

 _"Perfectly reasonable, I'm sure, if demon conjuration is as normal as you've told me."_ Britain said, then coughed into his fist. _"Exactly how are you contacting me on your end?"_

"Ladies hand mirror." I answered promptly.

_"Yours?"_

"Nah, but if we asked I'm pretty sure they'd let us keep it."

_"Very well then. You and this- Sieglinde, was it? can hold the communication open for a few moment's more, I'm sure. I'll get the tools I need to make the connection permanent, which she can use until we devise a better method of communication…a crystal ball, mayhaps."_

"Why doesn't he like mirrors?" Sieglinde asked curiously as Britain left the room again, and I winced.

"Evil body doubles came through the mirrors."

She gulped nervously and huddled into my lap, making me hum softly in a comforting way as I lightly squeezed the arm around her waist.

Scraping sounds denoted Britain bringing something back again, and the world in the mirror suddenly flipped and flashed before we were greeted by the sight of his impeccably boring and fanatically neat trousers. From this I gathered that Britain had taken the mirror off the wall and was now doing something to the back while he was sat down.

 _"How'd you pick up this waif, anyways?"_ he asked, his voice coming through clearly enough.

"My mother was a wicked scientist trying to synthesize a chemical fog even more lethal than mustard gas, and to that end imprisoned me from the age of three in a forest. She built an elaborate conspiracy around me that deceived me into thinking that I was the Emerald Witch, descendant of a long line of witches seeking to provide miasma to wolfmen, which was toxic to humans, and broke and bound my feet under the guise of this illusion." Sieglinde rattled off. "She also peopled the medieval village I was supposedly protecting with soldiers who had orders to kill me if I ever penetrated the illusion or stepped out of the forest."

_"…bloody **hell** , Aryana, how do you keep getting yourself into these messes?!"_

"It wasn't my fault this time!" I wailed defensively. "My employer was told to investigate weird cases of disease and death in Southern Germany!"

_"Christ. You're like a **magnet** for trouble."_

I pouted over Sieglinde's head, sinking down into my shoulders, as Britain continued to do whatever he was doing to the mirror's back.

"Fine." I grumbled. "Speaking of which, how are Prussia and Romano?"

 _"Loud and annoying."_ Britain answered promptly.

"…they did something to you after they figured out you guys fuuudged up in sending me back home, didn't they?"

There was a telling pause.

_"No."_

"You _hesitated_ , man."

"You did!" Sieglinde said with authority, nodding rapidly under my chin. "You hesitated! Absolutely hesitated!"

_"Does this child even know what that word means? How old is she, anyways?"_

"Aaaand you're dodging the subject."

"He's dodging it." Sieglinde agreed in a stage whisper.

_"Oh for- alright, FINE, **yes** , they did something. Prussia turned my home upside down and inside out on the basis of the cheeky assumption that 'I wouldn't even notice because **obviously** I couldn't tell my own right foot from my left, since I sent a human to the wrong dimension.' Romano just upped his swearing."_

My eyebrows rose.

"Is that even…possible?"

_"Believe me, it's possible. He even went around the first meeting after our…mistake, asking for the most eloquent and blistering curses in the language of everyone there. I got told that he would plant a mango tree in my sister's…"_

He abruptly paused as he seemed to realize nearly too late, just as I was frequently doing now, that Sieglinde was a child and really shouldn't be hearing the kind of language we were used to employing. Sure, she knew about sex, but her carelessly raunchy jokes showed she'd definitely learned too early, and I really figured that we shouldn't make that problem worse. Any other kid I'd probably chance it, while telling them that such words were only for dire scenarios, but, well…Sieglinde was "corrupted" enough already.

_"…nether regions, and…diddle my mother in its shade. Along with his usual amount of invective, of course."_

I whistled and made a mental note to remember that one. Impressive, even for Romano. I wondered which country he'd learned it from? Mangos were tropical, right?

 _"Right."_ The image in the mirror was suddenly flipped over again, and we saw Britain's stern face. _"On a brighter note, I'm impressed with your progress thus far, Aryana, and I look forward to hearing from you once you've successfully left this world. Now,"_

I heard the audible cracking of his knuckles as his arms flexed a little in our vision.

_"-let's see what you both know, and we can start working on a curriculum for the young Sieglinde here based off of that."_

I sweatdropped. "You really know how to make even the most fun things sound boring…"

_"Oi!"_

_***Time Skip***_

By the time we were summoned down for dinner, Sieglinde was chattering a mile a minute, riding me piggyback with the hand mirror tucked safely in her pocket and bumping against my shoulder and back occasionally.

"-and I can learn science from Herr Britain too, modern science! Science that in this day and age would seem like a miracle!" she said excitedly, swinging her legs a little. "There's no telling how many people I might be able to save with that, and magic too! I can accomplish things no one else could ever dream of!"

"Yeah, but be careful not to focus too much on whether or not you _can_ do something rather than whether or not you _should_ do something." I told her. "I'm not gonna be responsible for a mad scientist. We're definitely going to need to get you to read _Frankenstein_ , if it's been published yet. Snake'll probably have a copy if it has."

"Frankenstein?" she blinked. "And who is Snake?"

"Oh, our footman, the one with the scales and the snakes that are usually climbing all over him. He was held as a circus sideshow when he was a child, so please be kind when talking about the way he looks." I told her. "Anyway, he's a huge fan of literature, and _Frankenstein_ ends up being a pretty famous book. It was written by this super-Goth woman, Mary Shelly, who lost her virginity on her mother's grave and kept the calcified heart of her relative wrapped in a copy of _Adonais_ in her desk. Anyways, it's a story about a guy named Victor Frankenstein, who goes away to college and becomes obsessed with becoming the modern Prometheus, y'know, creating life and light out of nothing. He robs graves and builds what he hopes will be a perfect man out of the parts of corpses, but when he animates the corpse he's stricken with horror at how ugly it is and abandons it. The story deals with lessons in hubris and how cruel it was for him to abandon his monster, since it was basically a newborn child and was met with hatred and fear everywhere it went, making it turn bitter and cruel."

"How horrible." Sieglinde shivered.

"Yup. You'll have to read that. Ooh, and _Dracula_ too! That one's a classic monster story!"

"Monster story!" Sieglinde cheered, punching the air with the hand not wrapped around my neck.

I continued telling her about all the stories I _knew_ had been published at this point, courtesy of Snake, and some classic literature it would do her well to read, as we entered the dining room and sat down. Sieglinde began gobbling the food as soon as it was served, making me sigh a little, and exchange an exasperated glance with Mey-rin, who was serving us. Well, Sieglinde –I had the unmitigated audacity and bad manners to serve myself, since I wasn't going to make my roommate do work I was perfectly capable of doing myself.

Ciel mirrored our exhausted deadpan when he entered the room and saw Sieglinde tearing into the bread voraciously.

"Oh, Ciel!" she chirped as she noticed him. "Sorry to start without you, but everything I put in my mouth is divine! C'mon, hurry up and join me!"

She looked up at Mey-rin.

"Another helping, please!"

"Y-yes, yes!"

Ciel and Sebastian whispered together for a moment, before Ciel said something that made Sebastian smirk and straighten up.

"In which case, she must be thoroughly educated in the proper etiquette of young ladies upon our return to England."

"I'll leave it to you." Ciel said, sitting down as Sebastian pulled out his chair for him. "Her Majesty is most eager to meet her, so make short work of it."

"Very good, sir." Sebastian said with a short bow, hand over his chest.

Sieglinde jolted, shivering involuntarily with a nonplussed expression on her face.

"What is this chill I feel…?"

I laughed a little, but didn't explain, grateful that I wouldn't be the one put through the torturous wringer of Victorian manners, even if I was a bit curious about having them explained in more detail. Still, mere curiosity was not even close to enough to make me put myself in Sebastian's hands as a student, nope, no way. I was still jumpy after the whole incident in the Emerald Castle gardens before Sebastian had snapped Ciel out of his traumatic funk.

Once dinner had been concluded, a manservant came in to respectfully inform us that Wolfram was awake and the doctor was with him. Sieglinde leapt out of her chair, and if I wasn't for an athletic maneuver of my own, she would've tottered over on her tiny bound feet as she actually took several determined steps towards the door and the man who had given us the news. Briefly kneeling so she could hop onto my shoulders and cinch her feet around my abdomen, I stood up again, prepared to follow wherever the man led as Ciel got up more sedately, rigidly mannered in every inch of his body as if to contrast Sieglinde's careless exuberance.

We were led upstairs to a fairly comfortable guest bedroom, where a man with a white coat over his street clothing and a handlebar mustache and goatee was presiding over Wolfram's bedside. The butler, or perhaps ex-butler, was indeed awake as advertised, lying back against the huge fluffy pillows and watching us with some small amount of discomfort as we discussed his case.

 _"All his wounds have been closed, and bleeding should not resume. His resilience is most astounding. His strength is working in his favor as well, so he should be back on his feet soon."_ the doctor told us, and I set Sieglinde down in the chair as he vacated it, picking up a bowler hat and cheerfully tipping it to Sebastian on the way out the door. I wondered how much Diedrich was paying him to keep him quiet and give the man that kind of bounce in his step: I didn't know what had happened to Wolfram's ear, since there was a wad of gauze taped over it, but he'd been shot through the wrist and the chest, and those were unmistakably bullet wounds, which outside of America tended to mean a military force or something equally suspect.

 _"You…go by Sebastian, yes?"_ Wolfram finally asked with a voice still a bit rough from disuse, the bed creaking as he sat up a little, pulling himself back so he could rest against the pillows. _"Why did you save me?"_

 _"The young master commanded I do so."_ Sebastian said with an innocent smile.

Ciel scoffed, folding his arms. "Willfully deciding that you'd done your duty and leaving this mistress of yours in the care of complete strangers like us is the height of irresponsibility." he said.

Sieglinde and Wolfram both looked at him with drawn expressions, before Wolfram finally gathered his courage and turned to her directly.

_"M-my lady…I…"_

_"He doesn't need to hear all of that from you."_ Sieglinde said, her fingers clutching in the skirt of her dress. _"I'm the one who betrayed him first."_

"Eh?" Wolfram blinked, and she hung her head.

 _"I…took Ciel up on his offer to show me the outside world, and attempted to leave the forest that night. I gave in to my desires and intended to abandon everyone."_ she admitted quietly. _"But still, you…saved me. It's not as though I'm not angry about you lying to me all this time. But…I'm guilty of my own misdeeds."_

She lifted her face and tried a bright smile.

_"So, I'd say we're even!"_

_"My lady…"_ Wolfram breathed, shuffling to sit upright completely as he stared at her. The look of tentative hope on his face was almost painful to watch. _"Are you…saying you'll forgive me? Are you telling me I can continue to serve you as your butler, my lady…?"_

 _"Yes. Let's stay together always."_ Sieglinde said, gently touching the hand that was clenching into the covers near his hip, before clasping it and smiling up at him. _"Let's go see the outside world together for ourselves, Wolfram."_

His eyes watered, before he tugged her close and wrapped her in a hug, burying his face in her shoulder as Sieglinde's eyes widened, before she smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck.

 _"Ja."_ Wolfram told her hoarsely.

__

_***Time Skip***_

Once everybody –and that everybody was mostly Wolfram, being as he'd been shot and all– was capable of movement, Diedrich had us packing away on a train journey, which I kinda understood. Sieglinde was technically a government fugitive, and Wolfram was a soldier who went AWOL, which to my understanding meant a court martial at best and a .45 mm pension plan at worst.

Hence, as we all showed up bright and chipper on a train station, disguises. Sieglinde had a sunhat and a wig of long, smooth blonde hair, and Wolfram had a toothbrush mustache and spectacles in addition to his sideburns –which had been turned black, along with his hair and eyebrows.

"Woooow! You look great!" Finny encouraged him as Wolfram itched at the back of his hair, and Sieglinde sat woodenly in the invalid's wheelchair that had been procured for her.

"Bear with it until you get to England, yes?" Mey-rin told her, and Sieglinde gave a stiff nod.

"My thanks, Diedrich, for allowing us to impose on you." Ciel said, and the man humphed and folded his arms again.

"Indeed! Like father, like son…Don't bring me trouble next time."

Ciel smirked. " _Next time_? Are you inviting me to visit you again?"

"Wh-what is that smirk for?! Shoo, shoo!" Diedrich flapped his hand at Ciel like he was herding a goose. "Don't you ever come here again! Good riddance!"

Much to my amusement, when we entered the carriage and the train began moving, Sieglinde had climbed into Wolfram's lap, nose pressed excitedly against the window. She was too focused on the changing countryside for a while to take any notice of the rest of us, but after the monotony of the landscape became apparent –rolling hills and forests were all very nice, of course, but after hours of staring at them, they started to lose appeal– she turned back.

Thankfully, Sieglinde was very good at not mentioning the magical aspects of our talks to the other servants, but (and this much to Wolfram's chagrin) she took an immediate interest in Snake, climbing over to him and pelting him with questions about books and his snakes, the latter of which seemed just as interested in her as she was in them, much to Wolfram's horror.

I thought he was just about ready to leap out of his seat and drag Sieglinde back to dubious safety when Snake told her that Webster –who was coiled around her neck and nuzzling curiously at her cheek– was a golden lancehead pit viper and could kill a grown man in thirty seconds flat with his venom.

Since our daytime travel was occupied by this, much to Snake's visible pleasure as Sieglinde picked his brains for literature and snake trivia, obviously bonding with all his many snakes, too, it was only in the evenings as everyone else dozed off or we packed into a hotel that Sieglinde and I could squeeze in a few moments for magical exercises. At this point, we were trying to build up her stamina much like Britain had done with me at the very beginning, by having her manifest magical energy around parts of her body, especially her hands, until she could do it reliably and as second nature. I didn't have the labyrinthine knowledge that Britain did about magical lore and rules, so we were going to have to stick to these most basic of basics, even as Sieglinde soaked up what little information I could give her without my books like a sponge.

She grabbed what books Snake had brought with him and read them voraciously, no matter that they were in English, and asked questions him afterwards. She asked Wolfram about being a soldier, about the German government, about government in general, about weapons, about combat training. She asked the conductors about the trains when they asked for tickets, she asked the hotel clerks about their hotel, and usually within a dozen questions she'd run her target audience to the ground with questions about technical detail they didn't know, leaving her unsatisfied. She asked Mey-rin about being a maid, about washing sheets, about fabric textures and weaves and threads, about soap, about water and water temperature. She asked Ciel about being a noble, about his family, about his job, about his company, about England. Every question that got answered sparked at least three more.

As adorably awesome as Sieglinde was, it was exhausting to be traveling with a genius, especially when she singled me out by virtue of being from the future.

How had technology progressed? Did I know how to make mechanical devices? Why didn't I know? Why hadn't I wanted to know? What kind of things could she make with the current level of technology? Why wasn't I sure? Why hadn't I looked around to learn about it? Could people fly? Why hadn't I told her before about planes? Could she make a plane? What did I mean, that required all sorts of special knowledge and skill? Could she make a car, then? A freezer? Why did she have to wait to create them if she could bring all these improvements to people _now_? What was so important about maintaining historical progression? Why couldn't she use her knowledge to help people overcome their prejudices so they didn't clog progress? What did I mean, it wasn't that simple? Why wasn't it simple? Why were people cruel to other people for no reason? Why did they think race and religion and gender was an adequate reason? How could she fix it?

And on, and on, and on, all of this in a similar vein for days on end. She was a wiggly little ball of endless exuberance and curiosity, and as much as it tired and frustrated me not to be able to tell her answers that I didn't know, I was honestly looking forward to when we got Sieglinde her own place in England and she could really put the pedal to the metal when it came to _learning_ all the stuff she was asking about now, and fulfilling that insatiable curiosity. And then she could learn more, and more, and more!

More questions came when we got on the steamship across the channel. Why was this called a steamship? Where did the steam come from? How did that make this enormous ship move? What was that smell? Why did the sea smell salty? Why did it have salt? Why was someone heaving over the side? What was seasickness? Why did only a few people get seasick? Why did ginger help with it? Why did I only know from a book about vampires? Why was that in a book about vampires? Why were the heroes going to France? Why was there a Mayan exhibition there? What was Mayan? What did they have to do with Mayan civilization? Why were there Mayan vampires? Was Camazotz a real god? Was he really called "He Who Walks By Darkness"? Is the blood rose a real plant? How come I didn't know?

She got a little sad when I told her I'd have to go back to the manor with the other servants while she and Ciel got gussied up for the Queen, and I probably wouldn't have time to work with her for a week or so, but cheered up enough when we walked down the gangplank, waving happily to the others before she was placed in her wheelchair again, and she was downright in gobsmacked awe after she and Wolfram shed their disguises and came into London with the rest of us.

 _"So this is London!"_ she gasped, eyes sparkling.

 _"This is the capital of the empire on which the sun never sets, over which Queen Victoria rules…"_ Wolfram hummed, looking just as impressed, though perhaps for a different reason.

 _"You two!"_ Sebastian said sharply, before holding a finger to his lips. _"Using German here will make you stand out. Please speak English from now on."_

"Sure!" Sieglinde agreed happily as Wolfram spluttered.

 _"My lady is one thing, but I can barely speak a word of it, you know?!"_ he whispered urgently to Sebastian, who remained unmoved.

 _"Then make do with what little English you have._ I shall give you intensive instruction upon our return to the manor." he chuckled ominously.

"Now then," Ciel said, adjusting his hat. "I'm sure Her Majesty can't wait to meet Sullivan, so I mean to present her to the Queen in one week."

"One week?" Sebastian asked, raising his eyebrows as Sieglinde waved, pointing wildly to Big Ben and inquiring what it was. "Is that not perhaps a bit too soon…?"

"Surely, you, of all people, can whip her into shape? The methods you use are entirely up to you." Ciel scoffed. "I command you, Sebastian. Turn that artless urchin into a lady within a week!"

"Yes, my lord." Sebastian bowed, then straightened and clapped his hands sharply. "Right! First, the dresses."

I waved to Sieglinde with the guilty sense I was consigning her to the devil as I turned away with Mey-rin and the others to get our pony and trap from the townhouse so we could ride back to the manor.

_She'll be fine, she picks things up like super-quick. She's totally going to be fine, she'll knock it out of the park and have the Queen pour buckets of money all over her so she can continue researching to the benefit of the Crown._

I blinked as a thought suddenly occurred to me.

_And even if she doesn't…I won like 20,000 British pounds off of the cricket matches. That's like, how much money?_

_Enough to run a laboratory…?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: June 17th, 2020, 2.59 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: June 17th, 2020, 2.59 PM USA Central Time


	65. That Butler, Giving Notice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The guns in Black Butler continue to frustrate me, because professionals like Mey-rin would know and use the correct language for them, but none of the stuff she uses was INVENTED in 1889. Pistols that allow for double-action (in other words, modern guns that only require you pull the trigger and reload, rather than fiddling with the hammer manually between each shot) weren't invented or mass-produced until the early 1900s, but she comfortably uses two of them to shoot at Earl Grey in the Murder Arc, and as I noted before, Ciel's gun is probably a Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless. 1903. I don't even know what to say with the guns of this world anymore. On a related note, the quote Snake suggests to Arya is from a collection of short stories published in 1933, but the quote's so great I decided to tweak the timeline a little.
> 
> There's also absolutely no precedent whatsoever for Sieglinde to live in Blackheath, but I was at an AirBnB there for a week, and its within walking distance of the Greenwich Observatory and Prime Meridian, AND has ties to royal presence, so…it fit.
> 
> In other news, celebration! I said I'd get double, and by last chapter I already did, but didn't notice until now. But this fic is now MORE THAN TWICE AS LONG as the last one, and still going a little! Holy smokes!

_Arya's POV:_

"So, uh, I guess you know why I'm here?" I asked.

The scene was familiar: Ciel, working patiently at the mound of paperwork on his desk –Sebastian, hovering attentively nearby– me, standing awkwardly before them both.

"I assume you're about to give notice." Ciel said, briefly glancing up from his papers. I shifted a little.

"Uh, yeah, sorta. I'm still having a problem linking the battery stuff to the rest of the apparatus, as it were, but Sieglinde's a verified genius, and she's devouring the books I send her like a goddamn fire."

 _That_ was putting it mildly. I'd parsed through the stuff that didn't have any obvious corruptive energies or messages, making sure everything was as squeaky-clean and aboveboard as could be managed in this world, and delivered what ended up being damn near an entire cartload of magical textbooks to the residence Sieglinde had been granted after her meeting with the Queen –which, according to a very proud Wolfram and a more negligent Ciel, had gone swimmingly– and not even a day later, when I'd gone back to help her sort through them if she needed it, she was halfway through the entire lot and had a hurricane's worth of papers strewn about her, covered with reams and reams of notes in German and English combined. The only ones she hadn't gone through were those in Latin and French and Greek, and she had five or six different cross-lingual dictionaries opened up on her messy desk, seemingly prepared to tackle them when she got around to it.

"See, the thing is, I can't keep wasting the day going back and forth between the two of us." I explained. "It'd be easier for everyone if I just moved to Sieglinde's place and we worked on things together, because that way I could advance her magic training to the point where she could help me, and everything could finish out all the sooner. So yeah, I suppose I am giving notice, if only because I'll be leaving to work with her and I almost certainly won't be coming back to the manor house before I vacate this world entirely."

"Understandable." Ciel said, before his eyes sharpened, and he laid down his latest paper and regarded me with a calm, clear gaze. "I can't see why I shouldn't offer you the opportunity, given as your work in my service this past year has been…acceptable."

 _Ouch_. I felt what little ego I had ever possessed instantly shrivel into a feather-thin crisp.

"Do you have a suitable excuse to offer the other servants?"

"Uh, yeah." I said, trying to recover my crushed dignity. "I thought if I said I had a super-awesome job offer that's even better than yours from an old friend, the others would accept that as trustworthy, because it was coming from someone I knew and liked and not someone who might try to use me against you. Maybe like a job offer from my old friend in Germany? That way I could ease out of communication entirely, and they'd be cool with it, and everything would be fine."

"Very well." Ciel nodded slowly. "In that case, consider yourself on severance. You might want to make your goodbyes to the other servants, and if you aren't going to use it, clean up that mess in the forest clearing."

I sweatdropped. "You haven't even been there."

"Sebastian assures me that it is a mess." Ciel replied blandly.

"Oh, like he isn't biased as hell!"

"That adjective could describe me in many ways, yes."

Part of me considered, for a moment, what kind of petty revenges I could finally visit upon Sebastian just before I left, but in the end, I didn't think it was worth the risk.

_***Time Skip***_

"I'll miss you so much, yes I will!" Mey-rin cried, squeezing me tightly. I freed my arm from her embrace with a slight jerk, patting her on the back soothingly as she clutched at me and sniffled.

"Yeah. Me too." I said. "I, uh, I honestly would've died a bunch of times if you hadn't taught me to shoot like you did. And…it's been real. Sharing a room, I mean. First time I've ever had a roommate, and you were a, uh, good roommate."

"Yes, well, you just remember our rules." Mey-rin said as she pulled away from our hug with one last sniffle, tugging gently at the collar and lapels of my brisk business dress in an apparently instinctive desire to straighten them. "And you'll be just as good or better a fellow boarder as I was to you. And don't let any stuck-up cats treat you poorly, either! Just because they've been in service to the master longer doesn't mean they're any better than you are."

I huffed out a laugh. "Yeah, I don't think that'll be a problem. I've been in this household before, y'know? Everybody knows me."

"Hmm. Well." Mey-rin gave one last tug and judged me suitably presentable. "Don't you lord it over them, then. Nobody likes a priss!"

I laughed again and rubbed the back of my neck, ruffling my hair, which was only now just barely getting long enough to tie in a tail again.

"Yeah, I'm not going to inflict that on anyone, thank you. I respect my fellow service workers."

We both indulged in a moment of mutual gloom. If working retail sucked, working as a full-time servant in the Victorian era was nearly as bad.

"Well, knowing you miss, I did think to give you a parting gift." Mey-rin said, adjusting her glasses a little, before she turned to the now-empty drawers and began rummaging around. Well, they were empty in the sense that none of my effects were in there: this was solely Mey-rin's room once more, and I had all my things packed into my apocalypse bag, which hung on my shoulders. I'd even included all my outfits, one because there was no way I'd be able to acquire tailored garments otherwise, and two they'd be absolutely sick costumes once I got back to my proper time frame.

Eh, anyways.

I blinked as Mey-rin turned around and handed me a pistol, with an accompanying shoulder-harness underneath it.

"I saved up for this, yes I did. It's a Little Tom."

I squinted.

"It's a double-action semi-automatic pistol." she explained kindly, seeing my pause. "You just need to load the cartridge and fire, yes you do. You load it from the top like this…"

I waited patiently as Mey-rin explained the workings of the gun for me, feeling more and more warm and fuzzy as she did. This was an expensive gift, even if by the shape I was pretty sure she had at least two more of her own stashed away, and I was touched by the fact that the gift was given out of genuine concern for my safety and wellbeing.

"I'll name it after you." I said with a teasing grin when she finally handed it to me, and turned the gun over in my hands, considering. "Hmmm…how about 'Cherry'?"

"You can call it whatsoever you like." Mey-rin said, more serious than I had seen her for a while, before putting a hand over my own on the gun. "We've left quite a mess behind us in Germany, and I don't like to think of you going back without being armed to the teeth. You've gotten good with that Colt of yours, but this is a better gun, miss. I'll want you to be practicing with it every day, and don't you let anyone catch you flatfooted."

Really touched now, I smiled and surprised her with a tight hug.

"You're sweet, Mey-rin." I told her. "I will."

Prolonging this goodbye any longer was going to have one or both of us dissolving into tears, and I think we both knew it, since we pulled away at the same time and Mey-rin was adjusting her glasses compulsively.

"You do well, Miss Thompson." she told me thickly, and I grinned and saluted.

"Yes ma'am!"

* * *

I shook hands and exchanged a chaste hug with Finny on my way up the servants' stairs, and exchanged a hearty high-five and a much more aggressive hug with Bardroy, one with many backslaps before we pulled away.

"You send us something neat from Germany, yeah?" he said, cigarette bobbing, and I laughed and rubbed the back of my head guiltily.

"Uh, I'll try. I might not be able to get post, since this job'll be a bit…" I glanced around furtively. "… _undercover_ , if you know what I mean. Spying and sneaking and all that."

He whistled, impressed, and gave me a sandwich to eat on the road, with a cautious chomp on my way out the door proving that it was a BLT with the bacon only mildly seared to an inedible crisp. I'd had worse under my tenure as Britain's apprentice, since that guy couldn't cook to save his immortal soul and was a hell of a lot pricklier about me refusing to eat the toxic waste he qualified as edible products. (I swear, the guy could burn _water_.)

Out into the bright sunshine and surprisingly intense heat of an English August, and I trotted down the bridle path to the stables, where I expected to find Snake and his menagerie, given as this weather was something the whole lot of them loved to bask in.

Sure enough, Snake was sunning himself happily as he sat on the wooden rail around the paddock, and I whistled to let him know I was coming as he opened one eye, then straightened up a little.

"Aryana! We were waiting for you, says Emily!"

"Waiting for the sunshine, you mean." I said with a slight grin, and he looked sheepish.

"Well, Great Britain is so dreadfully hot, we must take advantage of these months when we can get them, says Wordsworth." he told me, voice altering slightly.

"Mm-hm." I drawled the sound out, making his sheepish expression deepen. "Still, you'll be fine after I leave, right? I don't want to leave my friend in the lurch."

"We'll be quite fine here, says Emily." he said, sliding off the railing with a yawn. "The earl has given us free access to the greenhouse over the winter so that we don't catch chill, and we've barely yet begun to delve into the Phantomhive library. I gather maintaining contact will be all but impossible, but we will keep you in our thoughts –she adds fondly."

"Thanks, Snake. You too." I said, then smirked a little. "You were circus folk, yeah?"

I lifted my left arm and tapped the back of it, grinning.

"Maybe I'll get a sick tattoo memorizing you, commemorating our friendship and all that."

As I expected, being a member of the somewhat fringier part of Victorian society meant that Snake only paled at the idea of a lady being tattooed, rather than falling over in a dead faint.

"And just what would this tattoo be, Oscar asks?" he asked warily after a moment, a bead of sweat sliding down his jaw.

"I dunno. Snake made of words? Snake made of your names and all the names of your snakes? Snake made of literary quotes?"

One snake hissed at me from his shoulder, and I blinked. The side of Snake's mouth quirked up slightly.

" _'There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.'_ –says Wilde." he said, and I blinked, then whistled, impressed.

"Woah. Really? What's that one from?"

"Guess, he says."

I groaned and rolled my head on my shoulders. "Oh, come _on_ , man. I give. I give! _You_ are the book master! Library lord above us all! I accede defeat. Now, who wrote that?"

"P. G. Wodehouse, from his collection _Mulliner Nights_."

"…I like it!" I said, grinning. "You want to write that down for me though, so I can get it inked?"

With a put-upon roll of his eyes, Snake did, handing me back my scrap of paper and pen with the correct words on it after I'd fished both out of my bag.

"Thanks, Snake. You take care." I told him fondly, offering my curled fist as it was his turn to blink.

"Eh?"

"It's a fistbump. You gently knock your fist against mine as a gesture of comradely farewell."

"Oh." he said, then gingerly curled his hands into a fist and lightly tapped it against mine. "Like this, asks Oscar?"

"Perfect, my dude."

* * *

I saddled Dämon for the very last time, hiding what sniffles I could in his mane as he nudged my shoulder with his nose, apparently sensing something.

"S'just a human thing." I told him thickly, wiping my wrist across my eyes to clear them. "Saying goodbye to friends and whatever. And you too, I guess, evil creature that you are."

He blew a wad of spit onto the skirt of my riding habit.

"Yeah, that's what I fricking thought, you demon horse."

I twisted to mount up into the saddle, taking a moment to adjust my bag so that the hours-long ride wouldn't become painful, before flicking the reins and heading out. I couldn't help but look back a few times, waving as much as I could without Dämon getting restless, smiling wistfully as Snake waved back and I saw Mey-rin waving from the doorway of the mansion itself. Sebastian and Ciel had probably already dismissed me as a point of concern, and most of me was fine with that. I was looking forward to being able to appreciate them from the other side of reality again, and maybe finding out just what the heck would happen to Ciel and his people in these coming months. After all, I'd been gone for over a year now, so there'd be a lot of catching up to do in the manga, even more so than what I'd originally needed to do, since I'd hardly been a reader of _Black Butler_ from its very inception.

Heck, it might even be finished by now! There might be more of the anime! The _anime_ might be finished too!

I grinned a little and kicked Dämon into a higher gear. It was too hot a day to send him galloping for long, but for now I relished in the brief rush of sultry air past my face, feeling nostalgia tug at me as we pounded into the forest and lost sight of the manor, whisking down the pathways I had learned by heart as we leaped past the place where I normally stopped to enter my clearing –now cleansed of all magical traces, with my wards powered down and scrapped, and nothing but a scalded burn mark that covered a good dozen yards to mark my prior failed attempts, or even my existence there at all.

Though it might seem callous, I supposed that my lack of true tearful emotion was born over the fact that, well…this technically didn't have to be goodbye if it needed to be. I could reach back through Sieglinde, sometime, maybe, if the other Phantomhive servants would credit it, and if worst came to absolute worst I could still hear about their shenanigans through her, and see them in the manga. I had been more disconsolate when I left my last world, too, because I had spent more time with those people, and bonded with them more closely.

For all the fact we shared a room, Mey-rin and I hadn't seen that much of each other except when I got a moment free of my duties and helped her out. We were friends, sure, but not the kind of ride-or-dies I had almost actually died with in _Hetalia_. All the other servants, minus Snake, were at one remove from that, and with Snake, our friendship had been the companionable silence between two people who loved books and loved to read them, mixed with snippy challenges about what we were reading and what we had read. We hadn't talked all that much _beyond_ literature.

So yeah, I guess my sadness was sort've muted. I could see these people, talk to them again if I tried hard enough, and when all was said and done, we weren't so utterly close as friends that I'd be shattered at never crossing paths again. Was that callous of me? Or perhaps I was just used to this, since it was my second go around? Was this the mental maturity of half a year in this world and facing its challenges mostly alone?

I didn't know.

Something to be contemplated at a later date, to be sure, which I could charge my phone and contact Britain more regularly. Yeah, we had the hand mirror now, hung in pride of place in Sieglinde's workshop, but that only worked sometimes, since Britain did have, y'know, a _job_ to do in his world, and all the business of being a country to attend to. According to Sieglinde, he only checked in inquire about her progress every few days or so, and generally for less than an hour. It was different with my phone, since text messages could be sent through on the regular, but keeping my phone on to receive his messages, when I still wasn't quite sure of how much longer I'd be stuck here, made me nervous.

However, as I trotted into London with Dämon, I was just a little bit naughty and fished my phone out, taking as many pictures as I could as subtly as I could, since this was going to be one of my last and only chances to get authentic snapshots of Victorian London. And since I wasn't technically quite attached to Ciel and Sebastian anymore, if someone was weirded out the consequences wouldn't fall on anyone important, if any were even forthcoming.

I smiled fondly as I put my phone away, glancing off in the direction of Ciel's townhouse as I guided Dämon politely along the crowded streets. On that trip to London to check on how fast Sieglinde was going through my books, I'd stopped by and been given some hugs and a hearty farewell feast, and Prince Soma and I had cheerfully renewed our promises to visit each other's countries, thought that sort've left my poor ignorant American self in a quandary. Did Bengal still… _exist_ in my time period? Or was I going to have to page through historical things and visit the ancestral seat of Soma's family's power in what was now another country?

Eh, I'd figure it out. The hardest part would probably be convincing my parents and possibly concerned authorities that I was totally fine and completely capable of traveling halfway across the world for no reason they would understand on money I had not acquired in a legally documented way.

No pressure.

I could afford it at least, since Britain –after giving me a good scolding for betting on a cricket match–had put me in the way of a money-changing spell that would shift the value of the bills I had, so that when I popped back out in Virginia, I could exchange obsolete Victorian pounds for the modern USD and not lose any of the obscene amount of money I'd gathered by betting, and also Ciel's generous wages.

Mostly the betting though. Like, according to Britain I had the equivalent of over two million pounds just from those two games. I was _rich_.

And sure, I had forcibly shared about half of that money with Sieglinde, telling her it was good to have a nest egg just in case the Queen turned evil or something (hey, I remembered the ending of the first season of the anime) and she had to book it with Wolfram, but there was still a lot left over. I wasn't sure to be proud or amused that Sieglinde took my warning with deadly seriousness and worked out an elaborate escape plan with Wolfram over our tea, but I guess once bitten, twice shy, when it came to being manipulated by uncaring governments hungry for superweapons. Worst came to worst, she and Wolf would make it out okay.

I toyed with the notion of telling her Sebastian wasn't human and Ciel was tied to him in more ways than one, but I hadn't said a word of it yet. Sieglinde, in all her young hubris, might try to challenge Sebastian for Ciel's soul, and given how that had gone for me even as a warning not to _try_ , I didn't want her taking a baseball bat to that particular hornet's nest. I could always tell her later, or have Britain tell her later. First, I wanted Sieglinde to be strong and confident in her magic, not to mention nicely settled in as an invaluable genius to the British government.

That, I noticed as I took Dämon around to the back of her roomy house in Blackheath and the tiny stable for perhaps one house and carriage there, was well underway. Looking into the windows, scientific apparatus was littered everywhere, much of it delicate, almost all of it complex, indicating that Sieglinde was putting the Queen's grant and the resources made available to her through their respective paces.

Good.

"Sieglinde!" I called as I pushed open the door, and was rewarded by an absent call from her workroom up the curving stairs. Following them up, I stepped into the cluttered space that was nominally an examination room, but also a study, a library, and a laboratory. Sieglinde had a desk and an ornate chair, and several large bookshelves already well on their way to being filled with books and jars of preserved specimens, and she had several boards, one of slate and one of cork, hung up on her walls, covered with drawings and pinned notes. Most of them seemed to be anatomical in nature.

The tiny scientist/witch/magician/absolute genius herself was seated at the desk, reading a book I didn't recognize with her finger in an opened translation dictionary.

"Hard at work?" I asked, and she made another vague sound, not really paying attention. She looked between the two books for a few moments, apparently checking or translating something, before sitting back with a sigh.

"I thought, since I had such a thorough grounding in chemical science as it regards to biology, I should study medicine." Sieglinde explained abruptly, scooting her chair back a little so she could turn and look at me. "According to Herr Britain, many of the diseases and health issues of this time are preventable with modern science and medicine, so if I should wish to improve the lot of all people of this age, I should merely reinvent the medical practices of your time and devote myself to standardizing them across all walks of life."

She thumped her hand on the book she'd been reading, which now that I looked over her shoulder was in Greek.

"So I am studying all I can about the human body!"

"Not that I don't want to encourage you as much as I absolutely can…" I said, scratching the back of my head. "But can't you not _read_ Greek?"

Sieglinde waved her hand at me carelessly. "Well no, not at first. But once I started cross-checking it with words in English and those to German, I was eventually able to put together the pattern of the words and phrases. Its slow going, but I think I'm becoming fluent."

There was dead silence in the room. If we were outdoors, a tumbleweed might've whisked past.

 _Whyyyyyyy is it my misfortune to be surrounded by child geniuses and savants?!_ I wailed internally, wanting to tear at my hair. _It took me ages to learn German and Italian, and I was learning it from the countries themselves! I cheated with Latin and Greek and French, sure, but there's no way a normal human could just –pick up a language within a matter of days, especially not one so fiendishly complex! How is she even doing this?!_

"Th-that's…good…Sieglinde…" my dazed mouth managed to utter, the rest of me lost in a stupefied daze.

"I know!" she preened. "Wolfram was very impressed. Are you here to continue your education with me?"

"Uh, right, yeah." I quickly shook off my feelings of inferiority. "Just let me change out of these horsey clothes, yeah? I'll be right back."

"Your room is third on the right, like I promised!" Sieglinde chimed happily.

Running up to drop my apocalypse bag and dig around for another garment that had not been subjected to the unkind touch of my evil horse, changing quickly, I seized my journal-cum-grimoire and headed back towards the three-story tower Sieglinde was presiding over. She had already cleared away a small space on the square end table by the window, and we sat down together as I opened my book.

"Okay, so here's what I got so far." I explained. "I'm going to need to dig out a clear space in the yard somewhere so I can etch this diagram in the dirt-"

"Surely you can use the floor in one of the free rooms?" Sieglinde asked, and I blinked.

"Uh, well, er, yeah, if you'd let me. Alright then, I'll need some paint and paintbrushes and enough time to practice laying out the spell that way until I get it flawless." I said, then continued. "The spell is two-part, a recited portion and the sigil itself. I'll need to speak each separate component to invoke them as I add them to the completed diagram, channeling magic into the spell as I do, and once I've done that, I'll have essentially eliminated this world and everything in it as a destination from the spell. After that, I'll need to do the same for the other worlds I've visited, but Britain already created those sigils and spell components for me, so I know that part of the diagram is safe."

Sieglinde nodded intently, staring at the drawings and notes on the well-worn pages as I turned them slowly and pointed to indicate which one I was talking about.

"Since creating an interdimensional hole requires a destination, this spell is basically going to latch onto me and read the place I'm connected to. The point of including all these world-specifiers is to narrow down the options: since I've been to those dimensions, their energies have contaminated me, if you will, or at least they'll mix the readings on the spell. If I just activate this thing without them, either nothing will happen, or the spell might yank me in three different directions at once as it tries to pull me to all those worlds."

"What would happen to you then?" Sieglinde asked, her brow furrowing in concern, and I scratched my cheek sheepishly.

"Eh…ever seen a bug hit a windshield?"

She blinked at me.

"Er, right. _Bwoosh_."

I mimed a splattering, exploding motion with both hands, and Sieglinde winced.

"According to my studies, having multiple different and disconnected worlds trying to seize on you at the same time is sort've like subjecting your body to the pull of physics of all of them at once, except it's like a two-way or three-way or however-many-way tug of war, and obviously subjecting the human body to the gravitational pull of even like one planet is something you don't survive."

Should I tell her this? It was gruesome, but better safe than sorry. At least this way, Sieglinde knew how high the stakes were for a mistake in this particular spell's use.

"Basically, every atom of every cell in your body rips apart into however many pieces of the worlds that were tugging at you. So let's say three worlds, all your atoms rip into three separate parts in a single moment, turning you into a fine cloud of gory mist and bone dust as your body rips apart, and a nanosecond later all the atoms splitting apart ignites various kinds of chemical reactions that probably would blow up everything inside your wards, and possibly several miles outside them if you didn't make 'em strong enough."

"HOW CAN ANYONE HAVE CRAFTED SO DEADLY A SPELL?!" Sieglinde cried, flailing her arms incredulously.

"Well I mean, that's only if you don't put any specifiers in the spell, or if you don't specify that you _don't_ want to go to all those worlds." I said fairly. "And we _are_ dealing with fundamental aspects of time and space, so there's a correspondingly cosmic scale of consequence if we f- mess up."

"I suppose…" Sieglinde muttered rebelliously, folding her arms.

"Anyways, we _do_ have the specifiers, so that won't happen unless I've messed up with the sigil representing this world, and Britain already said it checked out. Basically, now that I've disallowed myself from going to those places, the spell's going to loop back to the only other place I'm from, and it'll send me home."

"I see…"

"But the problem is my ignition system, as it were. I just can't figure out how to get the right amount of power channeled into it as I go along." I said with a sigh, sitting back. "I've tried linking the power-up runes to the sigil itself, but that always warps it, and I'm afraid of twisting or corrupting the diagram if I try to work them in that way. I've tried a step-up system where I link each set of powering runes to the next one and have them multiplied exponentially, but that doesn't link up with the rest of the spell and I need this to be in one harmonious whole. I've even tried copying over the power runes and how they were integrated from the other world sigils, but they don't work with the magic from this world, or when they do, its spotty and irregular in a way I'd be a fool to trust in an actual spell-casting scenario."

Sieglinde rubbed her chin, humming. "It is a very complex puzzle." she mused aloud. "This is all you need for your spell, however?"

"Yup. Though that's an "all" that's stymied me for a few months, so, you know. Don't belittle my pain."

She giggled a little.

"Well, alright then! Let's get cracking, as the British people say!"

_***Time Skip***_

Talking to Sieglinde over our dinner a few hours later told me what she'd been getting up to these past few days, after she'd been instated as an official asset of the monarchy or whatever. Wolfram had been kept busy with a series of deliveries and the setting up of her instruments, some of which were quite heavy, and assisting her with their assemblage, though now that the frantic activity had tapered off somewhat, he was working hard to master English and being a valet both.

Sieglinde, however, was buzzing like a bee, using her prodigious allowance from the Crown to raid what seemed like every medical facility, bookshop, and privately printed text collection that she could get her hands on, collecting what was already a vast library of knowledge. With Britain's advice, she had scheduled her time throughout the day, with scientific textbooks in the morning –Wolfram lamented as he served us that she read at the table and frequently poked herself in the cheek with a spoon by accident– that changed to my magic textbooks as she tended towards lunch, where she contacted Britain in her mirror (and now me as well) if she needed help in fitting an idea together or an explanation that the textbooks didn't offer. She switched back over to anatomy textbooks and medical experiments as things drew closer to teatime, given as the Queen and other callers would visit at that time, and wrote up her notes, theories, and findings for the day after dinner, indulging in more experiments or some free time of her own after that had concluded, and studying more language dictionaries before she went to sleep.

And I thought I'd had a serious work ethic.

She was eating, breathing, and practically _sleeping_ knowledge, and was full of chatter about the things she was learning, which I listened to with an interested smile. Sieglinde read things for fun, too, in that time after supper and before bed, and she would talk about the classics of literature she was absorbing, and she had plans to start going to plays and operas at some point too, not just for the music but also because she wanted to _learn_ , and a lot of references were made from popular literature and the stage, since it was the only form of moving entertainment nowadays.

Heck, there were bucketloads of flowers named for Greek legends, and parts of the body were labeled with references to Roman deities. Science and mythology were intertwined, and there wasn't a scrap of this sort of learning that Sieglinde would pass by, just on the off chance it _might_ prove useful.

Since I was going to be living with her for however long it took to complete my ritual, we took some time picking over how and when I'd be added to her busy schedule. In the mornings, I could probably work on that practice I was talking about, with painting the sigil instead of drawing it, while she studied her science textbooks. I could get pulled out when we broke for lunch or she had a question about magic things, whichever came first, and we could both discuss the progress we had made over lunch itself before splitting off, or not, as needed. Depending on whether or not I'd found a likely scent, I could research that or offer Sieglinde advice throughout the afternoon, and after dinner we could both relax and rejuvenate, or I could answer more questions, whichever either one of us was feeling like.

However, I couldn't work magic –or rather, paint a magic sigil– on wooden boards with gaps between them, so our first order of business was to choose the room I'd be working magic in and designate that as Sieglinde's workroom as well, once I'd left. Since concrete wasn't invented yet, to the best of my knowledge, we'd have to find a way to somehow plaster the floor smooth, which would definitely be an all-day project, possibly an all-week project. I also needed to have Sieglinde set up a tab at the simulacrum's magic shop, and, it went without saying, get some painting supplies.

All this meant one thing and one thing alone.

"Shopping trip!" Sieglinde squealed excitedly. "We'll get to see the London sights again!"

"We must account for the household budget, my lady." Wolfram said carefully, balancing the empty plates. Sieglinde pouted at him.

"Its only a few little things, Wolf! And Arya has money to pay for it on her own!" she whined, swinging her legs furiously under the table.

"I do have money to pay for it on my own." I agreed, which was true enough, but I also liked adding more fuel to the fire. "Actually, it might be smarter to split that up into two trips, since the masonry or whatever we're gonna use to patch the floor will be heavy and unwieldly, and the magic bookstore should still be open at this time of the evening. Far as I know they never close."

"Very well then!" Sieglinde said as she sprung up, seizing her little pair of crutches to hobble decisively towards the door. "Wolfram, summon a cab! We're going to the magic store~!"

He sighed a little, but went to hastily put down the plates in the kitchen before doing as she said.

Sieglinde spent most of the cab ride in a state of excited fervor, continuing to swing her legs and peek out the windows at every single opportunity, apparently never tired of seeing even the most mundane of new sights. Her excitement awakened some feelings of nostalgia in me and spurred me on to a little excitement of my own, and I kept looking out the windows too, smiling fondly. Part of me was going to miss London: it was nice enough as far as cities went, and I had gotten used to the rhythm of living here, how it was different in the US and even my time period, a little bit.

"So, I can have you take over my tab, which will avoid you having to connect your, uh, public identity with what you do in the shop." I said as the cab rattled along the cobblestone streets. We'd gotten a handsome, so it was the three of us all in a line, me and Wolfram squeezed to either side with Sieglinde perched adorably in the middle. "Magicians in this world are a competitive, wicked bunch, and you don't want them to start sniffing around a new prospective pawn, especially when you have ties to the Queen."

"They can _try_." Wolfram rumbled dangerously, reminding me that he was an ex-soldier and a pretty viciously skilled one at that.

"Eh, magic manipulation can hit you in ways you won't see coming." I told him, then glanced towards Sieglinde. "I know Wolfram won't be helping you so much with your magic studies, but keep him appraised of the general things to watch for, okay?"

"Okay." Sieglinde said with a firm nod, wrapping both arms protectively around his uninjured wrist. The other was still bandaged, but apparently healing well enough –still, the gesture made Wolfram's expression soften as he gently cupped her hand with one of his own, before her hands returned to her lap.

"And remember, the simulacrum sells to anybody with the money as a way to disallow conflict and political ties in its shop, so you'll need to be careful around other customers and never, ever come there without Wolfram." I added, and we both looked towards Wolfram.

He scowled, reaching up to crack his large knuckles grimly.

"Yeah, like that. Be like that. Sieglinde, don't step away from his side no matter _how_ interesting something in that shop might look."

She gave me a flat look.

"Arya, I can't step anywhere yet."

I winced. _Open mouth, insert foot. Or wait –ack, stop thinking about feet! She's fine! It'll be fine!_

"Y-yeah. Sorry. Force of habit."

Her expression softened, and she patted my hand. "I know. You're just looking out for me. What sort of creature is this shopkeeper?"

"Eh…" I motioned vaguely with both hands. "Some kind of crystal mannequin, about waist-height for me, translucent, glowing eyes. Kind of looks vaguely like some kind of reptile. Says it was made by a now-dead magician to look after their books, and it just kinda been relying on that to make its living for the past five hundred years."

"How exciting!" Sieglinde said, waving her arms briefly before both me and Wolfram slammed our arms across her middle, keeping her from slipping off the front of the open seat of the hansom. We both exchanged the mutually long-suffering look of two child caretakers with an unruly charge, before we nudged Sieglinde back to rest against the seat and she started asking me more about the bookshop and how I had found it.

__

_***Time Skip***_

"Take that!"

I dodged as a glob of something wet and grainy was flicked past my ear, and retaliated by using my longer reach to smear a gobbet of gypsum plaster on Sieglinde's nose.

"Aryaaaa!" she cried, wiping frantically at the greyish smudge with one of her long, worn sleeves. "That's no fair!"

"All's fair in love and war." I said wisely, only to squawk as she grabbed an entire handful of the plaster goop and smeared it over my stomach. "Hey!"

 _"If you're going to fight, don't get any of the plaster chunks in my way."_ Wolfram said in German from about the middle of the room, still patiently smearing the contents of the bucket by his left knee over the wooden floorboards with a towel, making sure the surface was level and smooth.

"She started it." Sieglinde grumbled, folding her arms and pouting from where she was seated atop a wooden milk stool, another bucket between her knees and a long metal pole sticking out. She was dressed in a shabby old boy's shirt and trousers, as was I, though my bucket was primarily for the purposes of carrying water and I was otherwise occupied with opening the packets of gypsum powder.

I swiped some of the excess plaster off my shirt and flicked it in her direction by way of retort, grinning at her outraged squeak.

Three days after I had moved in with Sieglinde and Wolfram, and we were busy redecorating the highest room of her home's tower and preparing it for use as a magic workroom, coating the boards in a layer of gypsum plaster a few inches deep. This was only slightly a royal "we," since Wolfram was handling almost the entirety of the actual work involved, whereas Sieglinde was mixing up a bucket for when he finished with the one he was using now and I was ostensibly fetching more water and preparing the individual packets inside the burlap bags outside the door for mixing.

That was the theory, whereas in practice me and Sieglinde spent a decent amount of time fighting with the gypsum plaster not currently being used while a long-suffering Wolfram patiently coated the floor, starting from the back of the room and working his way towards the door.

"The walls are already plaster, so they'll be pretty easy to paint wards on." I noted as I stepped over behind Wolfram, checking how much plaster was still in his bucket and if he'd need us to give him the new one anytime soon. "You'll want to lock your workroom up tighter than a drum, and it wouldn't hurt to ward the rest of the house, either, though you'll obviously have to create more subtle wards for that. And _why_?"

"Because normal people would obviously be disturbed upon seeing them." Sieglinde answered, giving a few vigorous stirs to the bucket between her knees. "And anyone who sought to pass those wards or harm me would also know where they were to destroy them. I want wards all around my home to close it off to any evil or malign influences that might seek to corrupt my magic workings or harm me, as well as to block any indirect attacks, and welcome benevolent creatures by giving them a safe space to dwell. Increased warding on my workroom guards against any mistakes I make of an explosive nature."

"I'd ruffle your hair if my hand wasn't covered in goop." I told her proudly, and Sieglinde awkwardly covered her head with her arms as I passed by, unwilling to get her own plaster-covered hands in her new short bob and apparently untrusting of my ironclad reassurance.

Grabbing my pail, I trotted down the staircase once more, heading down to the kitchen and setting it in the sink. Wrapping my hand in the dirty rag I had left down here, I began working the hand pump to fill up the bucket, humming a little to myself as I did. It was a bright summer day, I was getting messy in the most entertaining kind of way possible, and I was making progress towards going home. Life was good.

Hauling the pail back up, I set it down by the door, stepping over to Wolfram and waiting until he scraped the last possible scoop of plaster out of it before taking the now-empty plaster bucket and switching it with Sieglinde's. Pouring a precise measurement of my water inside the new bucket, Sieglinde grabbed her pole and waited until I cupped another heavy bag of gypsum powder, slowly hefting it and carefully pouring it into the water-filled bucket. She stuck her pole in and began to stir once the mixture was about half and half, continuing to do so as I poured the bag out, until we had a lumpy, grainy mix in the bowl.

"I've been thinking." she grunted adorably as she stirred. "About the spell. What if we activated the power runes first, _then_ you started laying out the world-sigils?"

I considered that as I went to get the next back and slit it open with my old pocketknife, which I had retrieved from the very depths of my apocalypse bag at the beginning of our little operation.

"Maybe." I said as I laid it down at her side, within easy reaching distance for when we started the next batch. "The problem is, the whole thing has to be symmetrical in turns of power and activation. I can't have power runes woven into the other designs and then have this one with nothing, but I can't figure out a way to reweave it that doesn't leave it useless or doubles the flow of power up in knots."

Sieglinde scowled with the same frustration I had been feeling for weeks.

"Perhaps we could surround that individual design with power runes and linking runes that direct their power into that sigil specifically, tying them together, so that symbolically, there is symmetry." she said after a moment, and I perked up a little.

"Uh, yeah, I guess I haven't tried that yet. Dunno how well it'd work, though, since that might not be enough to get me up to full power."

"Scientific progress is made but a single step at a time." Sieglinde said wisely, though her air of solemn intelligence was somewhat ruined by the smear of plaster on her nose and her messy, plaster-dusted clothing. "We can worry about that bridge when we get to it."

"Yeah, I guess." I said amicably, then blinked and leaned forward. "Hey Wolf, did you miss a spot?"

He flicked a glob of plaster over his shoulder without turning around, which splattered directly onto my forehead in a disturbing display of accuracy.

Further such cheeky comments and displays aside, the floor was finished before Wolf had to excuse himself to prepare dinner, and we closed the door and left it to dry as Sieglinde and I sat on the stairs for a little bit, waiting for Wolfram to be done with washing himself off before we claimed those cleaning facilities for himself, since he was going to be feeding us after all.

"Perhaps combining several approaches?" Sieglinde tried, rubbing her chin and leaving smears of half-dried plaster all over it. We were both too messy at this point to care about a few more smudges. "Perhaps ringing that sigil with power runes and linking them into it, and then surrounding the diagram as a whole with more power-runes, which should make all the world-sigils symmetrical, or at least equally balanced, and provide an additional source of magical energy to finish the effect?"

"Could work." I said, tapping one plastered finger against my folded arm. "Guess the only way to be sure is to wait for the plaster to dry, set up some wards to make sure we don't blow up the whole tower, and try it out."

"After dinner." Sieglinde told me firmly, her stomach giving a loud growl. However much she outshone me in terms of raw scientific brilliance, she was still a growing girl, and both needed and craved as much food as she could get her tiny little mitts on.

"After dinner." I agreed. "That'll give us time to look something up to speed the plaster drying along, 'cause according to the salesman it'd take a week if we left it to happen naturally."

She made a face.

"I couldn't wait a week."

"Me neither, which is why we'll be using magic to cheat." I agreed, and we both laughed.

 _"My lady,"_ Wolfram interrupted, sticking his dripping wet head around the corner. _"I've prepared a warm basin for you both in the examination room below, as well as several towels."_

"Okay!" Sieglinde chirped, before looking at me expectantly. She always had so much energy, it was sometimes hard to remember she was effectively crippled: I kept expecting her to bounce up like any other little girl of her age.

Carefully picking Sieglinde up bridal-style, I began feeling my way down the stairs as Wolfram nodded and went back downstairs, leaving us both to sit down on the towel laid out on the floor near the basin, washing off all the sticky and crumbly bits of the drying plaster by splashing water over our arms and faces and scrubbing.

Once the water was a faded milky grey and we were both just as wet as Wolfram, I shook out my shirt, trying to get as much plaster off as possible. "I think we're gonna have to change for dinner, since I don't want any of this stuff getting in my mouth."

"Me either." Sieglinde agreed.

I carried her to her room and then went to my own, shedding my dirtier garments and pulling on a regular T-shirt and jeans, since Wolfram was the only one here to be appalled and he had long since gotten used to my "obscene" clothing, though I'd heard him muttering darkly about "bare arms and exposed legs" in the sort of pearl-clutching voice you'd expect out of the most repressed of modern audiences on more than one occasion.

Sieglinde clung to me like a little monkey as we swung by the examination room to grab our books before heading down to their modest dining room, both of us settling back with our respective research items as we waited for Wolfram to finish preparing supper. Sieglinde was working on her own pet project, finding out a way to un-bind her feet and be able to walk again like a normal person, while I was hunting down the spell that would speed up the progress of the drying plaster.

I was _literally_ looking up a way to make paint dry. Let it never be said that the world of realm was not a high-flying place of adventure and glory.

"You know, after you fix your feet," I said absently, glancing at her intently concentrated face in the candlelight. "-you're gonna need to set up an exercise regime to strengthen your legs."

Sieglinde grinned a little from behind her huge book. "So I can kick perverts in the face?"

"Oooh, no, not in the face." I said in a mockingly sanctimonious voice, shaking my head. "You do that in skirts, they'll just get a good look at your drawers and might consider it worth the broken nose."

I then grinned at her curious expression.

"Kick them in the _loins_ , so hard that they'll never be able to experience the joy of laying with a woman again."

Sieglinde giggled, before returning to her book. "I wonder if Herr Britain can teach me to fight in such a way?"

"Eh, if he can't, Wolfram probably can." I said absently, already distracted by my own book as well. "And Britain knows other people he could ask, too."

It'd be funnier for her to ask Wolfram about it, though. From how fiercely protective Sieglinde's manservant was, I could tell already that her teen years were going to be an interesting time. Any suitor that tried to woo her would probably be faced down by the demonically looming silhouette of the hulking ex-soldier as he stood over her shoulder, just _daring_ them to put a single finger wrong on his beloved mistress.

I shivered at the thought of anyone even implying that they wanted to do anything unsavory to Sieglinde within his hearing. They'd probably be lucky to be found out back of a slum somewhere with both legs broken and lying in the path of every carriage on the road.

Erm, anyways. Spells.

__

_***Time Skip***_

After we finished dinner, I took the steps two at a time with Sieglinde on my back, carefully setting her down before opening my journal to the correct page I'd written the drying spell on. I tore this out and stuck it to the door, channeling a brief surge of energy through it as the crack beneath the door was lit a rich autumn-orange, which slowly faded to the usual darkness you'd expect from an empty room.

Pushing the door open, I cautiously bent down and poked the floor with a bare hand, then grinned.

"It's dry."

"So now we paint the wards?" Sieglinde asked excitedly, and I nodded.

"We're going to have to ring the room in them, and its going to have to be small, so you have room to write or paint other things on the wall if you need to. Ideally, at some point, you'd get the designs inlaid, but we don't really have time for that right now." I told her letting her grab my shirt and use me as a sort of crutch and hop into the room as I obligingly stepped forwards.

I showed her what runes we'd be painting in my journal, then went downstairs to get the appropriate paintbrushes and cans of paint, leaving Sieglinde to study the relevant pages intently as she sat in the echoingly empty room.

"Alright." I told her as I came back up and set the cans down, leaving her a bundle of several brushes and taking another for myself. "I already know those runes by heart, so you can keep my journal and paint at the ground level, and I'll paint the top part of the room, okay?"

She nodded, and we popped the paint lids and got to work. I formed a quick three-step ladder out of my magic walls and stood on one as I began painting a small, hand-sizing protective ward about an inch below the ceiling, and Sieglinde got down on her stomach, starting to paint an identical ward an inch above the floor. Our plan was to slowly ring the room in these, which after drying would make this room impenetrable to most mid-level direct magic attacks and all ambient negative energies. Sieglinde and I could increase their strength and potency by focusing on or activating different parts of the warding, such as sigils that would protect the room itself from anything that happened in it, or from a more concentrated outside attack, or to keep something penned inside here, though we both agreed to make those wards target inherently malignant creatures only, not anything we decided was a threat. That should give Sieglinde some points with the magical creatures of this world after I left.

Of course, even though this room wasn't more than twenty or thirty feet square, that was still a lot of wards to paint, and it took us another few days to finally get everything down. This was in no small part because Sieglinde and I both had other obligations, such as eating, sleeping, and leisure, not to mention I felt like a dick to monopolize so much of her valuable time on something that would only benefit _me_ in the immediate sense.

But finally, we were done, and I was able to take up the washable paint, along with a mop and a bucket full of soapy water, to begin my practices. Immediately, I noticed the difference between paint and carving in the dirt, and it slowed me down considerably for another five days before I finally got myself up to my prior speed and accuracy in rendering the entire diagram, at which point we were ready to actually try experimenting.

Sieglinde waited outside the door on the landing along with my cleaning supplies, ready to take notes on what worked and what didn't as I gave our latest theory a try, ringing the _Black Butler_ sigil with powering runes that connected to it specifically instead of the entire work as a whole, and seeing if that clicked harmonically with all the other master-sigils.

I chanted carefully, painting in tiny, carefully precise strokes as my fingers began to tingle. The feeling built and built as I worked on the gradually expanding diagram, until it was a tangible force outside my body, a soft buzzing hum and crackle just within my hearing as the runes and sigils painted on the ground began to glow radiantly.

So far, so good.

By force of habit and training, I painted the large pentacle first, circling it in as mathematically as I could, before returning to the center to paint out what signifiers were needed inside the pentagram at the center, as well as the chains of words and signs around the outside of those lines, working in a slow spiral from the center outwards as glowing lines slowly bloomed across the floor and the air vibrated with untamed, wild energy.

In the half-pause between finishing out most of the auxiliary runes and starting on the master-sigil for the _Hetalia_ world that was at one of the points of the pentacle, I quickly pulled out the bottle of water from my pocket and took a gulp, replacing it and kneeling to continue with a much less dry throat as the words flowed a little easier again, carefully beginning to paint out the first of the fiendishly complex signs.

One done, then another, then another, and I took a deep, shaky breath as I finally got to the _Black Butler_ master-sigil, my voice shaking just a little for a few syllables before I firmed it and kept going. Enunciation was important when casting magic, everyone knew that.

Sieglinde held her breath as I started ringing it in with the sigils we had selected for our first attempt –which began to flicker or flare exponentially brighter as I started painting them in.

I knew all too well what that meaent, and immediately, I snapped my mouth shut and cut the power flowing into the circle, and reluctantly, after a few moments, the glow started to fade as the power slipped away. Luckily, there was no explosion this time, since I hadn't keep the power going and pushing it into those obviously unsuited magic signs.

"Dagnabbit." I groaned, sitting back on my heels. "Sieglinde, what's the list of the other runes we can use for this method? Maybe it's something wrong with the ones we're using and not the idea itself."

She fished around behind her, then produced a scroll triumphantly. Flicking it out from her place seated behind the doorway, I watched glumly as the end unrolled all the way over to my knee.

There was a pregnant pause.

"Sieglinde, sweetie, please cover your ears. I'm about to use some very angry words."

"Okay!" Sieglinde chimed happily, clapping both hands over her ears and closing her eyes with the bliss of sheer vulgarity-related ignorance.

_Bless this child. And curse literally everything else in existence._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: June 18th, 2020, 10.56 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted: June 18th, 2020, 10.42 PM USA Central Time


	66. That Butler, Final Project

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo, man, this has been a trip. Aside from my disgraceful two-year hiatus, this fic still took three years to complete. I started this when I was in HIGH SCHOOL –and now I'm three years deep in college, with an Associates degree (two, actually, since my credits covered two somehow) and working on a Bachelor's. Since I was actually working on material on and off all this time, that's five years that I've been slaving over this. Like goddamn.
> 
> But it's finally done! The people on AO3 and FF.net have been an amazing audience (crowd? readership?), even if I couldn't take some of the feedback on my unpublished chunk into account, since, y'know, I'd spent two years working on that shit and the only way I was ever touching it again was to throw it out into the cold light of day. I hope that my shameless plugging will be effective and you'll go read the Soul Eater sequel to this, the first chapter of which has already been published.
> 
> I lost some good men on the wandering way of this fic. TheKatanaMistress, Singular Poisonous Ashes, FallenwaterTheFallen, HawthornShadow…you guys were there since the beginning on FF.net, but after my two-year dropout, I lost you. I value each and every one of my reviewers/commentors, of course, even the ones that just send in "hey this is good," but these guys were like the core. I've got other regulars who did manage to stick around, and I lost some other regulars that didn't contribute quite as much, but these guys really did mean a lot, and they make me sad, 'cause like –do they even know I finished? Life makes us change and evolve, and especially for TheKatanaMistress who's been a fan of my works since like 2013, I can certainly understand why those folks might have moved on from checking the site, but like many of you regulars now, they were HUGE fans. Imagine having been there since the beginning of The Trekker before this and then losing the series after Chapter 21 of this fic. Never finishing, never knowing what happened. The idea just ties my soul up in cramps.
> 
> Here's to them –and all the other people who dropped out during my two-year hiatus– if they ever hunt me down again like a mad dog (as WriterGreenReads did, hehe) and finish reading. What took you guys so long? I missed you~!

_Arya's POV:_

Two days and a plethora of frustrated tears and incoherent screaming later (from me), we'd _finally_ managed to work out a set of runes that worked as functional batteries to the _Black Butler_ rune, but as I'd reluctantly expected, the entire array itself still didn't have the amount of power I needed.

We didn't stop, though. I was there nearly all of every day, painting and cleaning up my failed attempts as Wolfram bought can after can to replenish my dwindling supplies. Caught up, perhaps, in the thrill of discovery and how tantalizingly close we were to getting it right, Sieglinde had begun slipping in attending to her other activities, digging up more and more ways we could combine and recombine the various sigils and runes and power flows in a way that wouldn't blow up in my face or rip me apart.

And then at last, the day came.

As I painted and chanted, the array and every part of it remained a whole, unbroken glow as power thrummed loudly throughout the room, and Sieglinde gasped loudly in excitement, clasping her hands to her chest as her eyes shone, bouncing excitedly in place atop her much-comfier padded stool, which Wolfram had dragged up here wordlessly a few days back. It was _working_ , it was actually working, and the threat of my own human error messing it up made sweat trickle down my back as I painstakingly continued, chanting hoarsely around the less-familiar words as I slowly worked towards the very, very end of my array. If I moved my tongue wrong, if I misspoke, if my fingers twitched at the wrong time and I smeared a line, or if I moved my foot over some part of the paint that hadn't dried…I would fuck up everything I'd been working for over these past few months.

No pressure.

I finished. Nothing was faltering or making bad noises.

Straightening up quickly, I made my careful, ginger path out of the circle, stepping as fast as I dared as the glow started to diminish, the bright light dimming.

"Arya?" Sieglinde asked in confusion as I cleared the outside circle of the pentagram and hastily joined her in the doorway. "Did something go wrong? Should-"

**FWOOM.**

The room exploded in light and a rush of air as Sieglinde and I both winced, raising our hands to block out the sudden bright, harsh glare, Sieglinde yelping in shock as the pressure wave nearly toppled her out of her seat and made our clothes flap wildly for a moment, like we were caught in a March gale.

"There's a time delay before the array itself activates." I explained to her, squinting as the light dimmed a little. "So you don't get immediately teleported the second you finish it. I'd be okay if you were in there, this sigil's keyed to me specifically, but obviously I didn't want to get kicked out without my stuff."

In the middle of Sieglinde's magic workroom, the array was glowing a vibrant sequence of rapidly-shifting colors that defied concrete explanation, mostly because they were blending together so fast. That light itself was radiating upwards like a reverse spotlight, though it was dimming slowly, and that light, at least, was mostly a healthy, encouraging green.

"Is it supposed to look like that?" Sieglinde asked, and I nodded, then realized she might be light-blind and spoke.

"Looks just like the one my Britain used, or near enough."

"Shouldn't it look exactly like it?" Sieglinde asked nervously, and I deadpanned.

"What, the one that sent me here instead of home?"

"…an excellent point."

"Right!" I clapped my hands together. "Now that we've established its authenticity,"

I punched both arms in the air, whooping.

"WHOO-FREAKEDY-HOO! I FINALLY GET TO GO HOME!"

"Yay!" Sieglinde cheered beside me, punching her own arm in the air with just as much enthusiasm. "You'll contact Britain to create a way to maintain contact with me, won't you?" she asked as she lowered it, and I scoffed.

"Dude, what do you take me for? Of _course_ I'm going to find a way to keep in contact with you!"

Sieglinde beamed, and we both went downstairs to the workroom to pick up Britain's mirror and aim it at the pentagram.

 _"Everything seems to check out."_ he said as Sieglinde slowly swept the mirror in an arc, showing him every individual word of it. _"Excellent work, the both of you."_

"Uh, not right now, because obviously I have to get through and make sure I don't end up in the Twilight Zone or something, but is there a way I could like…invite Sieglinde to my place?" I asked as delicately as I could, making her whip around to face me, eyes wide with incredulous joy.

_"You would be comfortable with inviting individuals from other parts of space-time comingling with your dimension?"_

"Uh, yeah, if its Sieglinde. Maybe you guys too, if you want to come." I said, and he muttered something darkly under his breath.

 _"You'd have to get home first, since you yourself do not constitute nearly enough of a sample size for even me to feel comfortable creating a transportation spell to your dimension…which is somewhat why you're in this mess."_ Britain said reluctantly. _"Since you and I can exchange messages through your phone, I'm sure we could thrash something out."_

"Sweet!" I chimed, and blinked a little as there was a stumbling sort of run before Sieglinde then cannoned into my middle, hugging me tightly.

 _"Thank you so much! I'll never forget what you've done for me, and I can't wait to see you in your world_!" she gushed rapidly, reverting to German as I felt something suspiciously wet soak into the fabric over my belly.

_Aw…_

I patted her head gently as she continued to fiercely hug me around the waist and probably-cry into my stomach, telling me how wonderful it was to be learning in the real world and how she had me and Ciel to thank for probably saving her life and teaching her to grow like this, and praising me so enthusiastically for how I had saved her perspective of magic and given her something to hope for that I felt myself blush awkwardly. It was a weird feeling to have someone express this much… _emotion_ at you, even when it was wholehearted affection and appreciation. _Especially_ then, actually, because expressing the fact you felt awkward when someone was telling you that you basically hung their moon and stars just made you feel like an asshole.

"There, there…" I tried, wincing at how ineffectual that was. But since I didn't have any better ideas… "There, there…"

When I finally could pry Sieglinde off of me, we went downstairs to gather my things and say goodbye to Wolfram. I was especially careful with checking over my room, since I couldn't very well send for whatever I lost or forgot here for what might be a very long time indeed. Aside from packing my day-to-day essentials that were still out, my toothbrush and shampoo and hairbrush and the like, I also got changed, since the last two times the spell had been used to switch worlds, I'd gotten dumped in water, putting on some boy's swimshorts and a plain brown tankini in lieu of undergarments, and pulling on a T-shirt on top of the tankini. I didn't have any water shoes, something I should probably remedy when I got home, but I compromised by only putting on my long-unused sneakers, since if there was any feeling more miserable than soaking wet socks, I didn't want to learn of it.

Suited up, as it were, I did one last sweep of my room, even going so far as to prowl throughout the house in search for the smallest thing I could've missed.

There was nothing, and I snagged an apple from the kitchen before going out to the stable, where Wolfram was carefully brushing Dämon.

"Hey." I said, alerting both large human and even-larger horse to my presence. _"The spell worked."_

 _"I see."_ Wolfram said gruffly, turning around, and we clasped hands.

 _"You take care of Sieglinde now, y'hear?"_ I told him, smacking the side of his shoulder bracingly as we let go, and he smirked a little at such a facetious statement.

_"Of course, I certainly will."_

"And you," I said fondly, stepping past him. "You evil, piece of shit, demon horse."

I swear Dämon raised an eyebrow at me.

"Yeah, you. You're going to go back to the Phantomhive estate and never have to deal with an inexperienced jockey like me again." I told him, reaching up to gently scratch between his ears. Dämon whickered and lowered his head to grab the apple I offered him, for once not ruining the moment by enacting any one of his evil, clever horsey tricks. "Bet you won't miss me one little bit. I think I'll miss you though…but only a little."

He snorted, and I took that opportunity to back out of the stable, waving cheerfully to Wolfram as he waved back.

"I'm going to miss you very, very much." Sieglinde said from her place sitting on the stairs when I came back in, and I smiled sadly, bending down to ruffle her hair.

"Hey, I won't be gone forever. And you'll have Britain to talk to, and Ciel, and Wolfram, and anyone else you want once you fix those legs of yours."

She giggled a little, flashing me a bright smile.

"I know. Promise to show me your world and all its wonders soon, okay!" she told me, and I smiled fondly.

"Hell yeah!"

Sieglinde used the excuse of me carrying her up the stairs to squeeze in one last hug, which I certainly didn't begrudge her, adorable little teddy bear of a doll that she was, and sighed reluctantly when I let go, setting her down on the padded stool Wolfram had left.

"Okay, so once I step onto this, I should get transported like, immediately." I told her, my serious face hovering above hers. "And the array should stop glowing, which means it's become inert with the fulfillment of its purpose. Understand?"

She nodded rapidly.

"Great. You wait until Britain calls you and says I made it through, and then you can wash away the diagram with soapy water just like normal. It won't do anything to me, I promise."

I let my apocalypse bag _thud_ to the ground, and opened my arms with a smile.

"Goodbye hug?"

She lunged forward and wrapped her arms around my neck, and I smiled and returned the hug, rubbing her back a little as she clung to me tightly. We held the hug for long enough for Sieglinde to squeeze out whatever emotional closure she needed, and I let her go when she started to pull away.

"I'll see you soon." I promised, and slung my apocalypse bag over one shoulder again, stepping cautiously into the room.

My heart began to beat a little rapidly as I looked at the sigil on the ground, shining and humming with power, and flashes of everything that could go horribly wrong kept intruding upon my brain as my grip on the strap tightened. This would be fine. This would totally be fine. I had okayed the array, Sieglinde (a child genius!) had okayed the array, and Britain had okayed the array. Three different people who knew what they were doing had said that this would work.

It would work. It would totally work.

Taking a deep breath and holding it, I took a step forward into the shining ray of light.

**FWOOM.**

The familiar jolt of tumbling vertigo hit me, and even as my heart jumped into my mouth I still felt mildly reassured that the terrifying sensation of being whirled around in what felt like a million different directions at once was still the same as the other times this spell had worked, meaning that whatever else would happen, I had still gotten the actual action of transportation right.

This was working.

It was fine. It was fine.

It was also vaguely dizzying, feeling myself tumbling head over barely-existent heels as reality stretched and altered around me in ways I didn't have the diploma to explain, everything going faster, harder, more, and more and more until-

**SPLASH**

**CRACK**

I felt the cool embrace of water close over my body, and abruptly let out my breath in shock and no small amount of pain as the back of my head cracked against what felt like stone not a second later, followed by the rest of my back a nanosecond afterwards. Luckily, whatever water I was in was shallow, so as I thrashed and sat up, coughing, gasping, and choking all at once (if that makes any sense), and losing my grip on the straps of my apocalypse bag into the bargain, I was able to do so without also continuing my drowning experience.

The second I could breathe without feeling water in my throat I groaned and clutched the back of my head, feeling it throb painfully. Thankfully, as I gingerly felt around, no blood was drawn and my skull remained un-dented. I would probably just have a monster of a bruise for the next few days/weeks.

Then I opened my watering eyes and looked around for my apocalypse bag, seeing it floating in the foot-deep water a few inches away. With a sigh of relief, I grabbed it and slung it over my shoulder again, taking the time to look around my landing site.

It appeared as if I was sitting in a decorative fountain in a city square or something, and my heart sank, because number one I knew there was no such thing in the town near my house, or any towns anywhere near my house, and number two I had no idea where I actually was, given that the architecture was…suspiciously funky for a real-life location. Skull motifs and wacky weathervanes were alarmingly common, and the roofs of the houses and the houses themselves were…skewed, in a way that didn't feel architecturally sound.

Perhaps it was just an artsy part of town. Perhaps I had landed in a very odd sort of festival. Perhaps this was an amusement park.

Perhaps I was desperately in denial.

At the moment, though, all I _did_ know for fact was that it was a very bright, very hot, and probably middle-of-summer day, and for once I was actually mildly _glad_ about being dumped in water. This particular occasion certainly beat being dumped in an ice-cold river in the middle of winter –an image and situation I couldn't help but long for, just for a second, as I squinted hatefully up at the sun.

At which point I froze, my eyes going wide, before I winced and closed them again, forcibly reminded that staring into the sun, no matter how cartoony and anime the world, hurt like a bitch.

_What. The. **Fuck**._

Everyone remembers when they were little and in kindergarten, and you drew a landscape for whatever childish reason, and you always drew the sun with one of two things: a happy lil' smiley face and/or sun rays, when you had never in your grubby crayon-grabbing life seen the _actual_ sun with anything like that? Hell, I remember that some of us would put shades on the damn thing, because there's nothing that four-and-five-year-olds like better than poetic irony.

Well the toddlers and kindergarteners of my world had a sudden basis in fact, because the sun I looked up at just now, while still throwing off as much light and heat as my native, beloved hydrogen-and-helium star, had everything except the ironic shades: flaring, conical rays that circled its entire –...body? Head? Self?– and a billion-watt smile that could put any comic book hero's to shame, gaping wide in amusement as faint laughter drifted down from the heavens. The sun had a _face_. A face that was _laughing_ , something intrinsically impossible in my home dimension.

Well _fuck_.

* * *

**To be continued, in _Soul Eater_ …**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cross-Posted: June 19th, 2020, 3.54 PM USA Central Time  
> Originally Posted June 19th, 2020, USA Central Time


End file.
